


STRANGE HAPPENINGS AT THE DAILY PLANET!

by HelloAmHere



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Comic Book Violence, Louis as Lois Lane bless, M/M, Secret Identity, Superheroes, Villainy, crude language from reporters under stress, dandies in distress, heroic journalism, labor rights and socioeconomic justice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-13 20:11:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21003488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelloAmHere/pseuds/HelloAmHere
Summary: Companies like LexCorp think they run the world. Louis does not think that anybody in particular runs the world; the world is a mess that no one is above, not even Lex Luthor, CEO and scion and heir to the empire, billionaire and genius. He’s walked around Metropolis like some kind of superhuman since Louis can remember, since they were both kids growing up in the city.Nobody is superhuman. Everybody has a weakness. You just have to be persistent enough to find it. Louis cannot wait.//A Superman/or a Daily Planet, AU.





	1. IN WHICH OUR HERO ENCOUNTERS CAGEY DEALINGS AND STRANGE NEW CHARACTERS ABOUT TOWN

New Guy is tall and broad-shouldered, and those shoulders carry a face with more planes than an airport and a raft of thick, dark hair that drifts rebelliously out of an insufficient gel prison and into a striking curl over an earnest forehead. Despite being lengthy, New Guy doesn’t take up a lot of space. Instead he sinks into himself, perched on the very edge of an uncomfortable plastic chair and balancing a freshly-issued Daily Planet laptop on his knees.

“Corn-fed, heartland-grown, Made in America,” Niall whispers, jabbing Louis in the thigh with a pencil.

Louis jabs him back without looking. Louis favors pens and Niall favors erasers. Niall has picked a losing battle from the get-go.

“Perry ordered him from a Sears Roebuck catalogue. Circa 1960,” Louis whispers back.

“Clearly earlier, look at the collar. But I don’t think rural Kansas in the Depression Era got those catalogues yet,” Niall whispers thoughtfully.

“’Course they did. Where else do you get your Manifest Destiny farm equipment,” Louis says confidently, even though the closest Louis comes to agriculture is buying organic beef.

“China, probs, and you need a history refresher,” Niall says like a shithead, because he once won a goddamn _ Reader Favorites Best of Metropolis _for his interactive visualization of manufacturing routes and he never let anyone forget it.

“OK, Wells Fargo brought him in. _ I _ think he’s probably from the 50s. That hair, that virginal vibe,” Louis says. It's calumny. Surely New Guy cannot be a virgin, not with a mouth like that. It’s slightly pursed in sincerity but it’s still so _ sinful. _Louis briefly considers and then discards the unjust odds of male journalist heterosexuality. But the eyebrows are promisingly kempt.

“Wells Fargo doesn’t do time travel, they’re a bank,” Niall murmurs.

He puts pencil to paper instead of Louis’ thigh, thankfully, earning them the cover of presumed note-taking while Human Interests drones on and on about the latest and greatest in pet cloning technology. Louis could've sworn they did a story about this just last spring, but what does Louis know?

“No they shipped things,” Louis insists. “That’s why there are the horses on the billboards. Wells Fargo shipped New Guy in from Iowa just this morning—”

“Kansas,” Niall corrects.

“They shipped New Guy in from Kansas just this morning, piping in Copeland over the speakers. He came with two pairs of bellybutton-level slacks and a well-worn copy of _ All the President’s Men _in an old trunk case.”

“The American flag fluttered over the station. He won best feature for his student liberal arts school editorial on a union for janitors,” Niall says, nodding. “Ne’er has the stank of big city corruption dampened this wholesome specimen, nor sullied his genitalia.”

“Well that’s not a culture fit for the Planet, how’d _ that _ get past HR,” Louis says, because world-class news organizations are a lot of things but _ chaste _is definitely not one of them.

“Haven’t you heard that we’re metrics-driven now? Metrics only care about averages,” Niall says serenely, “We’re all counting on you to bring the team up to KPI, slag.”

Louis puts a hand on his chest. “Do not come at me with your uncouth Irish mouth. Here in the great states I am known as a _ manwhore,” _

“Apologies, I meant to call you a hustler, a player, a dissolute,”

“A man about town,” Louis finishes grandly, “A _ ho. Oh ho the Well Fargo wagon, she’s a-coming down the street _ ,” he hums, “_Oh please let it be for me!” _

“Does Wells Fargo ship dicks?_ ” _Niall ponders.

New Guy shifts in his seat and catches himself, like something almost made him laugh but he stilled the reaction. Louis catches his breath involuntarily, but relaxes. The guy’s too far away to have heard them. Probably just neurotic. They get neurotic out in the farmlands, Louis is pretty sure. All the wheat blowing in the wind.

New Guy’s eyes are obscured by glasses. They’re thick and black-rimmed, which isn’t remotely the fashion in Metropolis. It gives him a vague grandpa look. A disturbingly hot grandpa.

Niall and Louis’ phones buzz simultaneously. Louis only lets the Investigative Journalism groupchat send him push notifications, so he knows it’s from Zayn before he even glances down.

_ u mention genitalia one more time during All Hands Meeting, Imma shank u w/L’s pen THROUGH the table_

Niall rolls his eyes. Zayn, wrapped in today’s hoodie (a kitten sleeping on top of a gigantic unicorn), raises a menacing eyebrow back.

_ Just following the lead, _ Louis sends back. _ Baby journos fall under human interest _

_ shut it, _ Zayn shoots back immediately, _ getting perry to clear u for a high risk piece is hard enough without u jackals acting like u have no fear at all_

“It's true, don't put my beautiful Lex Luthor sketches in danger,” Niall whispers longingly, nodding back in acknowledgment. Niall has an unholy appreciation for Luthor's face which irritates Louis whenever he thinks about it.

Zayn is right though. The Daily Planet Investigative Team--which is to say _ Louis, _ because Niall is on visuals and graphic and Zayn is getting sucked ever deeper into the alien abduction that is senior staff budget and strategy--has been prepping for the last month to pitch this project. It’s tough and risky and delicately timed, a deep-dive into the kind of powerful corporate players who don’t take kindly to journalistic inquiry. But they share a city with the Daily Planet _ . _Their mistake.

Companies like LexCorp think they run the world. Louis does not think that anybody in particular runs the world; the world is a mess that no one is above, not even Lex Luthor, CEO and scion and heir to the empire, billionaire and genius. He’s walked around Metropolis like some kind of superhuman since Louis can remember, since they were both kids growing up in the city.

Once, a long time ago, they'd even been in the same place--Louis on scholarship at Metropolis's most snot-nosed highbrow high school and Lex Luthor doing UN internships with that poisonous smirk on his face. Lex hadn't even known him, but everyone knew Lex Luthor.

Nobody is superhuman. Everybody has a weakness. You just have to be persistent enough to find it. Louis cannot _ wait. _

“Let us reconvene the review at the next barn raising,” Niall says gravely, under his breath. Louis stifles a chortle, and New Guy shifts again.

Louis doesn’t normally make a habit of staring down vulnerable newbies across the table, but there’s something magnetic about this one. New Guy’s eyes are an indeterminate color across the distance of the staff table, but they look piercing. Louis decides they’re glinting hazel through the thick lens of glasses. He’s in the full dress-code, which Louis hasn’t bothered with since he took off his jacket off halfway through his first interview at the Daily Planet, getting really heated about the Freedom of Information Act.

New Guy’s wearing a thick dark blazer with a tie pulled tight up to his not insubstantial neck. It’s a happy, bright blue design. Louis can’t quite tell, but it looks like it might have tiny cows on it. Louis narrows his eyes across the table.

Human Interests gives way to Local Politics. They have the agenda slot right before Investigative, which is in the last, worst place. Perry has already lost five entire inches slumping down toward the carpet. Louis often thinks that Perry might someday take permanent residence down there. Perry’s hand is splayed over his right cheek, gently bolstering his head as it attempts to flee the scene faster than his body.

When the hand creeps over to Perry’s mouth, they’ll all be lost. Louis jerks his gaze off the New Guy and looks down at the papers he printed out, pretty much for dramatic effect. He takes a deep breath and marshals his thoughts, starts running his part of the pitch in his mind. Perry’s a rigorous chief, hard-nosed and canny and less than fond of Louis’ restless disregard for formality and equipment and budgets. But he’s a fair boss and a great journalist and as decent at keeping a newsroom alive as anyone else is in the garbage fire that is a media trying to find its moneyless way through bent rich agendas. If it’s a good dig, Perry will wave them to the shovels.

A grin slides out unstoppably over Louis' face, teeth-baring and pointed. There are graphs and print-outs of obscure corporate stockholder terms and, floating on top like a cherry on a cocktail, an email that Louis had tugged gently but irrevocably out of a particularly guilt-ridden soul at a downtown accounting firm just this morning. Something is giving the underbelly of Metropolis a stomachache, and Louis is just the reporter to get his hands dirty.

“What are the odds,” Perry asks morosely, “That we get through elections this year without a bomb threat?”

The entirety of Local Politics bursts out laughing.

***

  
“Louis,” Perry says, beckoning from his office.

Louis is halfway to the elevators and has to plaster down the _ FREEDOM! _expression on his face as he wheels back around. Investigative mode always folds around him like a drug. All he wants to do is get out to a crazed world full of clues and all-nighters trying to flesh out the shape of hunches. 

“Yeah, yeah?” Louis says, blinking away imaginary blueprints of LexCorp offices.

“I want to make sure you meet Marcel,” Perry says. New Guy hovers behind Perry, peering at Louis through his thick lenses. Louis blinks again. Right—they’d introduced him at the end of All Hands.

“Louis T, Investigative, lead data-driven longform. Had that bit about infrastructure failure under Mayor Stipps and the scandal of the throttled energy pricing,” Louis says brightly, if curtly, rattling off cred and his recent award-winner in the automated manner of journalistic butt-sniffing.

“Marcel Kent,” Buttondown Beefcake says, like they _ hadn’t _introduced him at All Hands. He doesn’t follow it up with any cred.

He’s taller up close, and even his bad posture doesn’t disguise a lovely curve of muscles. His pleasingly full eyebrows have a small pinch in the middle, and he wears a vaguely sorry smile, as if to say _ I apologize for the inconvenience of inserting myself into your experience! _

But his hand is big, and warm, and steady. It sends a thrill snapping up to Louis’ elbow, unexpected. It’s so nice that Louis lets it go quickly.

“Welllll,” Louis says stupidly, confused about the need for intros and blindsided by annoyingly warm hands. But no matter. It’s clear that Marcel will end up in essays and digital platform, fidgeting with engagement-generating headlines and spinning out the occasional lengthy, grossly emotional personal essay on _ burnout _ or _ tiny towns America forgot _or whatever. The earnest ones always do.

“Twentieth-floor breakroom with the views has been claimed by Graphics and Layout, but they get way better scones and you can grab three before they start throwing red pens at you. That’s my bit for the orientation.”

Marcel’s smile turns real instead of apologetic. It spreads over his face like a sunrise, and contrasts with the strong lines of his jaw. It’s so _ pretty. _

“Marcel here is a great find for us, absolutely brilliant writer,” Perry says. “You should see his samples. Gorgeous. Maybe he could elevate the crash cart that is Investigative, so I don’t end up reading quite so many mud-stained notebooks and transcripts full of expletives.”

Pretty, Louis decides suddenly, is annoying. Louis can feel his mouth twitch. “People don’t always use elegant prose when they’ve had their life-savings stolen by ponzi schemes, Perry.”

“People also don’t tend to read a newspaper that’s got three pages of financial reports with no annotation!”

"I don't--" Louis starts.

"You're right, it was _ four _pages," Perry says.

Louis shuts his mouth a little too hard. So fine, sometimes Louis turns in a draft that’s a little more like the massacred bodies of a thousand factsheets than it is a Pulitzer-flavored, Netflix-ready docu script. And charm and form _ matter, _ Perry is fond of reminding them, to the _ metrics _ of what _ stories _ go _ viral. _And all that, in Louis’ not-so-quiet opinion, is just one more way for people to masturbate to the fantasy of their own importance. 

"We only matter if people read us," Perry says, which Louis has heard only as many times as he's had to watch Niall detail Lex Luthor's _ aquiline nose. _

“I’ll look forward to being elevated,” Louis says icily. “I’ve always wanted to fly.”

“Mhm,” Perry sniffs.

“I’m just lucky to be here,” Marcel says humbly.

_ God, _the Midwest is annoying.

“Cheers, hope you have fun,” Louis says with a tight smile, already beginning the turn back to the elevators, and the story, and the eventual and regrettable but inevitable forgetting of New Guy’s name. Hotness is all well and good, but taking down corrupt multinationals is more thrilling than sex.

Or at least, Louis tells himself this. Or at least, there'll be plenty of time after the saving of the world for the finding of the ass.

“Marcel is pairing with you,” Perry says.

“_He’s what,” _Louis says, turning back so fast that it’s comical.

“He’ll be pairing with you. On the whole LexCorp thing,” Perry says. It sounds just a touch gleeful.

Marcel gives a tiny, aborted little motion with his hand like he was about to _ wave. _What kind of dork.

“Oh,” Louis says, attempting recovery. It _ is _a big story. Corporate documents are insane and multifold, so maybe they need the hands, even if those hands clearly belong in a barn. “Sure. Analytics check, research backup?” He’d be a blurry figure chained to a desk, an occasional boring email the only link to Louis’ work in the field.

“No, you’ll both be full Investigative leads,_ ” _Perry says definitively. “I’ve met with Zayn about this already. We’re trying something different with this one. It’s too much work for just you."

"I work fine," Louis starts, but Perry cuts him off.

"You work _ late, _and so are your stories, and the profit of this paper not to mention the general well-being and sanity of your coworkers cannot be sacrificed at the altar of duplicative fact-checking."

Louis gapes at Perry, and then across the newsroom at Zayn, who swiftly turns his back as if there’s anything interesting at all about the rows of half-dead potted plants languishing by the ancient fax machine.

"You’ll be working in the field with Marcel, at every step. I want his perspective on this project.”

“But he’s _ new. _ But I’ve been working on this story for _ months,” _ Louis says, abandoning all pretense of manners, the _ he’ll fuck it up _ all but said. “Give me Niall. Hell, pull _ Ed _ over from Biz. Don’t give me the Indianapolis Varsity Prom King _ .” _

It comes out before he can stop it and he regrets it immediately. It’s the kind of thing that’s gotten Louis decked in a newsroom before. But Marcel just stands there, concern in his eyes and a tiny calm smile still on his face, in all of his dumb inches of brawny, suited politeness. Nobody’s hair could possibly curl that way naturally.

“So you’ll get to show him the ropes. That’s it, Tomlinson,” Perry says. He’s already going back to his office, which is a terrible sign.

***

  
“I’m looking forward to working with you,” Marcel says. “I’m sorry it came as a surprise.”

It makes Louis feel suddenly, deeply bad. Marcel has followed him down to the lobby like it’s his job. Which, Louis realizes suddenly, it _ is _now.

Oh, he already hates this.

“It’s not…it’s not you,” Louis says grudgingly, because New Guy is nice in a startling, all-encompassing way—like fresh strawberries breaking over your tongue, sweeter than they should be—and Louis probably shouldn’t be an absolute psychopath in the workplace.

He sighs. “It’s a tricky one. I’m following a trail people really don’t want us to follow, if it even exists at all. It’s not exactly fresh outta school stuff.”

“I’ve been gainfully employed outside of Metropolis. There _ is _ a whole universe out there,” Marcel says in something as close as Marcel apparently ever gets to a comeback, although still through that unpained smile.

“Well no offense,” Louis says, fully winding up to deliver an offense, “But for some things, Metropolis kind of _ is _the universe.”

“Then it’ll be exciting,” Marcel says resolutely. He’s incapable of offense, cheery like country butter and twice as soft. Louis is going to have to teach this guy some city monotone.

Louis shoves past a line of haggard midtown employees to badge out of the elevator banks. The Daily Planet is housed in the top floors of the skyscraper that boasts their melodramatic globe sculpture, but they share the building with several other companies. Louis catches security guards out of the corner of his eye: LexCorp. It oozes through at least fifty percent of the building, half the elevators blocked off unless you could badge into them.

“Yeah, fine. We’ll figure it out, get you something nice like checking contracts,” Louis says vaguely, distracted.

“I think I could do more,” Marcel says resolutely. He’s so brightly _ determined. _He catches the edge of his badge on the curved end of the security reader. Louis has to skid to a stop and wait for him on the other end of the barricade. The back of Marcel’s neck flushes red as he struggles with the card. He’s tentative, tugging gently like he doesn’t want to break it.

“You have to really give it a yank. Don’t worry, you won’t break it,” Louis says.

Marcel plucks at the card. _ Could _ he be going any slower. Louis holds back another sigh. “Look Farmlands, _ yank it.” _

Marcel’s big fingers slip a little, but the card slips out. It reads _ Marcel S. Kent _in neat ink, neater and more perfect than any handwriting Louis has ever seen.

The flush is all the way up to Marcel’s hairline now, creeping through the edge of his ears. It’s sort of lovely.

Louis shakes his head, wheels on his feet and pushes toward the doors.

“But if you don’t mind, I think, I do think I can be of more assistance than reading contracts,” Marcel says, trotting behind Louis. “I’m excited to build my investigative skills and I’m here to learn. If you’ll give me a chance, I think I can—”

“Sure, sure,” Louis says, neither agreeing nor listening. There’s a warm air coming in from the street and bringing with it the chatter of people and cars.

Metropolis whispers to Louis from a thousand spiraling leads. The accountant downtown? The ex-employee with the excel sheets that never added up? The city is rife with layers, each one holding its own meaning, geologic strata of possibilities rippling out from any point of inquiry.

The thing about Metropolis is that the power-mongers and the billionaires always look at the city and see a junkyard, a trash heap, a place so imperfect and chaotic that they can stow away their evil under the cover of all that noise. But the thing about junkyards is that _ everything collects there _ , not lost things, just disorganized things _ . _And Louis grew up in it. He can feel the pulse of Metropolis hit the underside of his fingernails.

Louis shoves out through the gigantic, bronze-colored doors of the Daily Planet. If LexCorp has garbage to hide, he can dig. It fills him with a dense, burning excitement.

So he isn’t ready at all when the explosion happens.

***

Commerce Street winds through the intersecting grid of Metropolis’ business district. The intersection in front of the Daily Planet’s building sees its heaviest traffic in the late afternoon, and three streets meet there in a bending turmoil of honking trucks and messenger bikers and suits and foot traffic, a dense whirlpool of human bodies and movement.

So when a gas pipeline creates a critical pressure buildup directly underneath Commerce, there isn’t even room to run from it. There’s the disorienting sound of something bursting, and there’s white smoke and hot steam, and people are shrieking_ . _

“Fu—” Louis gets out. He gasps, head whipping up and around but not fast enough to see what’s happening. His ears are ringing, light and movement impossible to distinguish in the blur of disorientation. He blinks, flails, and regains his footing. He reaches for Marcel, concerned, but Marcel is nowhere to be found.

There’s a group of schoolkids down the sidewalk in front of their steps. They’re all frozen in the confusion, and there’s a shiver in the ground that speaks to something building momentum.

Louis takes half a step forward, hands reaching out uselessly even though he can’t possibly reach them. He’s not going to be fast enough.

There’s a blur, linear and drawn-out, a motion like a high-speed jet in a movie, like a train in a cartoon_ . _ At first Louis thinks it’s another explosion, but it’s colored instead of white. People are still shrieking and his ears are ringing and he can’t _ see _through the chaos. The strange blurred line is blue and red, the impression of color streaking down the sidewalk. He can’t tell if what he’s seeing is even real. He blinks, and the kids are—the kids! Where are they?

The kids are half a block away. Some of them are stacked on top of each other in a tiny grass parklet, like they’ve been laid there very carefully on their backs by a strange nanny who doesn’t know how kids work. But they’re gasping up at the sky. They’re fine, they’re completely fine. Louis blinks, and the teacher is suddenly with them.

“The fu—” Louis starts again, and _ this _time the color streaks in his direction and an authoritative voice booms out.

“Please stay back, thank you,” says the voice. It echoes impossibly down the block. Something’s happened at lightning speed on the street, rubble covering the gasping steamhole and cars pushed back from their collisions. “If you could all calmly and quietly evacuate the area, I would very much appreciate it. Also it would be for your own safety.”

Several more people aren’t where Louis saw them last. A car moves, the _ ground _moves, like someone is shoving blocks into the shuddering gash in the street at impossible speeds. It’s chaos and he can’t tell what’s happening. Louis himself tries to step forward and he realizes only then that the initial blast had knocked him back. He breathes in smoke and rubble and steam, and his ears are ringing.

“Louis,” says someone with big, gentle hands.

“Oh, fu—” Louis says, and he's _ never _ gonna actually complete it, because he realizes that he’s falling. 

***

  
“There now,” says the dreamiest voice that Louis has ever heard. It’s thick like chocolate.

“You’re all right, Louis,” the voice continues. The sound of the voice is somehow an auditory representation of getting your entire gift wishlist on Christmas, Louis decides.

“Mrph,” Louis says. His ears seem ok but his vision isn’t exactly working. Did he faint? Is fainting a thing that bold-hearted journalists do? Surely not. An inconveniently-placed nap, then.

“There was an explosion, I’m sorry, I was distracted,” The voice sounds genuinely distressed about it. “I heard the mounting pressure in the background but I am still trying to understand human urban infrastructure.”

The voice was clearly telling Louis he was dead. Louis could feel rushing air, cold and crystal-sharp against his face, and he could also feel thick, warm arms around him. Wow, wasn’t there a hymn about this?

“It’s ok,” Louis says. Might as well be pragmatic about it. He attempts, gingerly, to open his eyes. He doesn’t see anything but blinding white, so he closes them again. 

“The area is secure. But I believe your inner ear imbalance combined with the shock of sudden, uhhh, street-level...removal...must have led to your loss of consciousness,” The voice says. The voice must be new at the job, he sounds nervous. Working as Heaven’s receptionist can't be super easy. “I’m sorry about that too. I am still learning _ human _ infrastructure, it seems.”

“Well there's a lot of it,” Louis says encouragingly. The voice sounds a little bit like somebody trying to be very professional. Louis finds that he still has a hand in the afterlife (interesting! Encouraging! Will Louis still have other body parts? Do angels require tutoring in human infrastructure?) and pats the warm, wonderful arm. It has a lot of muscle.

Heaven is all right. Heaven must pay top dollar in reception.

“It sounds like your inner ear has rebalanced. You can open your eyes,” The voice says. They’ve moved somehow, and Louis opens his eyes.

“_WHAT THE FUCK!” _Louis yelps, snapping back to a cold, harsh reality and away from very good dreams about hot angels. Ah, he finally got it out.

He’s being held by a man—a, Louis supposes it’s a man—a _ gorgeous _ man, in a—Louis can’t quite put this together into one coherent picture, because he’s squashed chest to chest with the guy and wrapped tight in his arms, Louis’ feet dangling over his boots—but it seems like he’s wearing a swimsuit. Like an all-body swimsuit, body-tight and _ brightly _colored.

He’s in the air. His feet are….No, that's…that's impossible. Louis decides he'll come back to this later.

The sun is shining behind the man, edging him in brilliance, dazzling Louis’ eyes.

There’s a cape involved. _ God _this man is beautiful. Louis squints at him, made dizzy by the wind rushing around them and the brightness of the sun on the clouds. The man has vibrant green eyes and soft-looking eyelashes. It’s cold but Louis is warm, pressed up to fire, pressed up to a vibrant heat that sinks all the way through him.

The man moves slightly in the air, a little like a cork bobbing in the sea, idle movements. The edge of the cape lifts in the corner of Louis’ eye, and then sinks.

Oh, and they’re hovering over Metropolis. _ Hundreds _ of feet above Metropolis. Louis can just make out the shape of downtown.

They stare at each other.

“I can’t believe I’m going to die and no one will even get to argue with me about whether this really happened,” Louis yells at last, because it seems like somebody should acknowledge the situation and Louis is nothing if not the man for the job of coming up with words when everyone else is stumped. “I owe my mom a phone call! I’m going to die! God, I should’ve called her!”

“No, no,” the man says quickly. “You’re quite safe.” He tightens his arms around Louis and beams down at him. The warmth increases.

Louis stares. There’s something kinda familiar about that jaw but he’s a little occupied with _ the fact that he’s floating in the air._

“What,” Louis croaks.

“I’m sorry again,” the man says. Politely. “I didn’t—well I didn’t want you to fall and hit your head. But then there were all those people around and I wasn’t ready. I—I move a little quickly sometimes.”

“What,” Louis croaks again.

“Oh, I have superspeed,” the man says, “I should have clarified. It’s been rendering me visually imperceptible to the people of Metropolis but letting me still help with things like the pipe bursting.”

“What,” Louis says.

"I can fly," the man adds a little desperately. "So we're safe. All good." He waggles a hand out in the air and Louis' body, without any input from his brain, convulses in fear.

The man swiftly grabs Louis with both arms again. "Sorry, sorry," he says.

“_What,” _Louis is now reduced to a whisper. There’s a gigantic emblem on the man’s chest. It’s pressing into Louis, the ridged uneven shape of some kind of symbol. He can feel it move as the man sighs gently.

“I’m getting ahead of myself. This isn’t exactly how I saw myself making a first appearance to a member of the press,” the man in red and blue says ruefully. “But I should finally start explaining to somebody. And you’re—you’re a good reporter, it’s because of you I came to the—I mean, I looked you up. I liked your work. I…I thought about this. So I’m trying to tell you about this. About me. The people of Earth deserve this, at long last.”

“Oh my god,” Louis says. He is definitely going to die and it probably won’t be as pleasant the second time.

A bird glides past them, does a double-take, and squawks away.

“My apologies, I didn’t know this was a flight path,” The man calls after it.

Above everything else, Louis is still a journalist at heart. So he scrapes through the incredulity in his throat and the whirling shock and panic in his brain and fixes the flying man (_oh god they’re actually, really, flying _) with his best interviewing stare. The one that gets all the answers.

“_Who the fuck are you, and what the fuck is this?”  
_

  
***

  
“Let’s try this one more time,” Zayn says through a mouthful of the best sesame chicken in Metropolis, the one from Mr. L’s on Thirtieth, double on the chicken and _ triple _on the little crunchy bits that come in the soft paper bags.

Louis sinks deeper into his overstuffed red armchair and eyes Zayn through the amber comfort of a hot toddy.

“By all means,” he says, swirling his drink.

“You were walking out of the Planet when the gas pipeline exploded,” Zayn says.

“_ Bloody hell _you gotta be more careful,” Niall interjects, throwing a crunchy bit at Louis’ head. Louis ignores it. A man has loftier concerns at a time like this.

“—when the gas thingie exploded, raising many troubling questions for our new Mayor,” Zayn continues patiently, “And…ok, and stuff happened. People got saved by someone they didn’t even see, street was strangely ok, maybe quasi-repaired? The gas pipeline was apparently scorched in this weird way they haven’t explained, like someone took a laser to it to cut it off from the other pipes, welded off, except that would’ve had to have happened in like, thirty seconds. At which point we have a thousand different accounts on the internet seeking to explain these events,”

“Twitter threads about conspiracy theories, new LexCorp tech,” Niall says, ticking off his fingers.

“A lively reddit exchange about city infrastructure and whether we could all be getting drugged by it on the daily,” Zayn adds.

“Drugs in the tap water,” Niall says, throwing Zayn another eggroll.

“New police technology, mole people,”

“_Mole people?” _Louis asks.

Zayn waves a hand. “There’s always somebody going on about mole people.”

Louis shakes his head. “Stop beating around the bush,” he says, “I told you what happened.”

Zayn sighs. He eats the eggroll very deliberately before going on, as if to steel himself. He sets his drink down, tucks his hands beneath his chin, and looks at Louis.

“A _flying_ man in a _blue_ suit with a _red_ cape scooped you out of the street, and flew you around the city while he granted you an exclusive interview_. _He is not an angel—”

“You said that three times, mostly to yourself,” Niall pipes in.

“He’s an alien. Not like coming to the border, like small green man from outer space with disproportionate black eyes. Did I miss anything?”

“From Krypton,” Louis says. “He’s from a place called Krypton.”

“Don’t the wings get tangled in the cape?” Niall asks seriously, and Louis sighs.

“Niall,” Zayn says, with infinite patience, “Louis has explained several times that the angel gets his flying powers from the sun.”

“_ Alien,” _Louis hisses into his drink.

“Ah,” Niall lapses back onto the couch.

Silence reigns for some time. Louis takes deep pulls of his hot toddy.

“I’m the first human he’s talked to, he says. I mean, in this capacity,” Louis says. He walks over to his laptop. “Apparently he’s lived here his whole life. I have the exclusive. The first contact. This is…this is going to change everything.”

Zayn and Niall exchange worried glances.

“So he’s an alien...who’s lived here his whole life,” Zayn says.

“He’s _ adopted,” _Louis says.

“Ah.” Zayn eats another eggroll.

The flying man’s name was _ Harry, _ he had said, or _ close enough for you to pronounce that at least, _with a smile that was dangerously gorgeous as he deposited Louis carefully on the rooftop of the science museum. Louis had made him fly loops around the building. It had been like a waking dream, a man in the air talking about another planet, a world in crisis, a lost ship sent out through the black in a gasp of hope. He had giant gleaming red boots, and the cape had swirled around him like wings, but there were no wings. Louis' heartbeat had pounded so long and loud in his ears that he could barely hear himself.

Louis had asked him a hundred, a thousand questions. Harry had answered about five, and one of those was his name. _ What is that symbol, _ Louis had spat out rapid fire among all the more important things like _ are you here to invade us. It’s the symbol of my family, _ Harry had said, glancing down at the giant _ S. My first family. _ His voice had been grave, slightly nervous, sincere, maybe…sad. _ I’m here to help, _ he had said. _ It’s my purpose. _

And then he’d tilted his head toward the south, very politely said _ I’m sorry there was a fire alarm, _although he had a look on his face like Louis sometimes saw on Zayn’s when Zayn was reaching a critical social anxiety threshold and decided to leave a party before he anxiety-rage-threw a beer bottle. And the man flew away, leaving Louis dumped back into normal life with his ears still ringing and his eyes still burning in the bright light.

“Look,” Zayn extricates himself up from takeout wrappings and makes his way to Louis’ side. He pats him on the arm. “You know we’re here for you. We’ll always be here to talk down Carl the security guard at the science museum and bring you home with takeout when you get caught up in one of your dreadful little adventures. But Louis. Could it possibly be that you got very rattled around in the explosion—”

“He’s _ real,” _Louis says. They don’t know how to believe him but he doesn’t even care, because he still feels, a little, like he’s flying above the city. Like all buildings turned into dollhouses and if he closed his eyes he could feel the sting of clouds. It’s like the world has cracked open and revealed something marvelously impossible on the other side of the planet.

Niall comes up on the other side with the eggrolls. Louis takes one, because eggrolls are still crunchy even when the world has become a world full of celestial beings who leave you stranded on the locked rooftop of a science museum until you call your best friends. It's possible that it all makes Louis appreciate an eggroll _ more. _

“Is it stress? Do you need to take a sabbatical with Layout?” Niall asks gently.

“Fuck you,” Louis says without venom as he opens his laptop to find his notes. He’d started typing the piece on his phone as soon as he’d figured out the science museum wifi login. _ Alien. Rescuer. Wannabe hero? Not Human. _ It didn't feel quite right. _ Amazing Man! _No, that was dumb--

“What. Is that,” Zayn says flatly.

A breaking news reel had started automatically playing in Louis’ always-open news clip summary window, streaming from the Daily Planet networks. It’s a live shot of the Metropolis, police cars flashing blues and whites and a helicopter in pursuit of a car chase.

“Why is shit always so crazy in this city,” Niall says.

“No, idiot,” Zayn says, “Look, there, up in the sky,” The camera trains shakily on an object that moves impossibly fast, behind the helicopter, and then past it. A blur of blue and red.

Louis catches his breath.

“Is it a bird?” Niall asks.

“Is it a plane?” Zayn asks.

“No,” Louis says. He grips both their hands and squashes eggroll into Zayn’s hoodie cuffs. “It’s _ Harry!”  
_

  
***

  
Louis bounces to the front of the very long coffee cart line at Oak and Broad, ignoring indignant yelps from sunken-eyed, soul-dead commuters.

“It’s a double cup kind of morning, Antonio, I need you,” he sings.

Antonio, obscured by espresso machine machinations, materializes from the clouds of steam and milk into indignant form over the syrups. “Is it all that fuss on the television now? They’re saying there’s a man in the sky. I gotta hear this from some six am banker?”

“I was sleeping,” Louis protests.

“I tell Sofia, I tell her we get news from the best reporter in the city, direct, ever since you started at the Planet,” Antonio says, poignant and accusing.

Louis tries not to fall for it. “I was _ wiped out _. A man needs his sleep! They’re not even bankers awake at six, that was some kinda investment broker--” 

“_Money men,_ they’re all the same,” Antonio sniffs, waving a freckle-marked, veiny hand dismissively at the skyscrapers. Louis grins. 

Antonio is a seventy-going-on-twenty Italian coffee artist who plays up the kitsch and the accent for the tourists. He should’ve turned the cart over to the grandsons long ago. They deal with the hotter afternoons and the longer weekends, but Antonio has been a morning workday lifeline for this intersection for thirty years, and Louis hopes he goes nowhere.

“Anyway, I couldn’t possibly tell you if there really is a loose flying vigilante in Metropolis, those bad guys might have piled themselves on that police car,” Louis says, but he winks, and Antonio laughs. He pours Louis two enormous cups of coffee and Louis inhales the dark roast smell like it’s food.

“So Metropolis has a flying man,” Antonio says, shaking his head. “Must be a real way to save on airplane tickets.”

“Seems unlikely,” Louis says. The back of his neck feels a little hot. A flying man who flew _ with Louis. _Jury out on the man part, technically.

“You gonna get me a picture of the fellow in that paper of yours so I can see if it’s true?”

“You gonna ever read it on the ipad I got you or just wait for your kids to bring you the physical copies? Breaking news goes digital first these days, Antonio.”

Antonio sniffs. “I need to touch the ink and the paper and turn the pages. You can only tell what’s real that way.”

Louis laughs. “This is why Layout gets the scones.”

Louis sips from one cup and then the second. Coffee floods his veins. He’s jittery and goofy and everything is sunlight. He woke up with a thousand headlines between his ears and he keeps looking at the sky out of the corner of his eye. He talked to a _ miracle _yesterday.

Antonio shakes a finger. “You’re my news, Louis. I’ll believe it when I see your name by it.”

“Can I _ get a latte here_,” mutters a dude in a suit so fitted it could be a straitjacket.

“And good morning to you, pumpkin!” Louis gaily waves him up to the cart, and Antonio whips through lattes with an easy fluidity.

“Every day there’s something crazy in Metropolis,” Antonio says sagely.

“Isn’t that the truth,” Louis says happily. There are _ aliens _ in this world, and _ car chases, _ and Louis has absolutely no idea where to start, but he’s gonna find Harry again, that miracle with the giant _ S _on his chest and the flipping ridiculous cape. He doesn't know what the plan is, but he's got shit to do.

And there's a familiar, plaid-clad form standing patiently at the far end of the line.

“MARCEL!” Louis yells.

Marcel leaps an _ absurd _height in the air. It startles several commuters and a dozen pigeons.

“Wow, were you on the track team or something,” Louis says, scooting over to Marcel’s side with both of his coffees. He had, truth be told, kind of forgotten about the Planet’s newest resident in all the excitement. He’s relieved to see Marcel in one piece. Would’ve sucked to blow up the country kid on his first day.

“I, ah, all right, so yes, it’s me,” Marcel takes a deep breath, like he’s preparing for another leap. He looks expectantly at Louis with a worried frown and a placating expression.

“Of course it’s you. Sorry I lost track of you yesterday,” Louis says. Marcel blinks rapidly. His hair is curling out of its gel again today. Is it product? Magic? Drinking fresh milk every morning?

“Uh,” Marcel says.

“That doesn’t usually happen, contrary to rumor, in Metropolis the streets don’t _ actually _ explode and we don’t _ usually _ have magical angel conspiracy theory people around,” Louis says. He leaves out the part where Louis had an exclusive angelic— _ alien _ —encounter. It feels precious and guarded and ridiculous and…Louis just feels dizzy when he thinks about it. He doesn’t know _ what _to think about it. He needs facts and figures and an interview recorded. He’s loaded his pockets down with all his spare recorders and battery packs, just in case.

He's also brushing off Marcel's brilliantly plaid blazer sleeve for some unknowable reason. He stops.

“Oh, um, oh, you don’t, uh huh, it’s fine,” Marcel says. Is Louis crazy or does Marcel look apprehensive? Marcel shifts from one foot to the other, like Louis has something on him and is about to call him out for it.

Louis blows out a breath. “Are you ok?”

“Oh. Yes. Ah. Absolutely. I am well,” Marcel says, fidgeting with his glasses and immediately smudging them. It makes his eyes even harder to see, so Louis looks him up and down instead. This is becoming a habit. A _ bad _ habit. Marcel is wearing another tie, but this one is grey and it has a tiny stripe wrapped around the front with white font. It says _ kindness _in small repeating letters. Good lord.

“How are you?” Marcel asks, genuinely.

“I’m baller. Come on, can’t have you live through a street bomb and then late for work, Perry would hate the HR meetings,” Louis tugs Marcel out of the line and up to the front. He protests and Louis ignores it.

“Caffeine for my newest victim,” Louis calls.

Marcel shrugs apologetically at everyone in line, and at Antonio, and possibly at the pigeons.

Antonio hands Marcel a cup, and then gets the full force of Marcel’s open-hearted face, does a double take, and adds a muffin, and then a banana. 

“Oh, gracious,” Marcel says.

“On the cart,” Antonio says grandly.

“This is Marcie. He grows cows,” Louis says, ignoring Marcel’s very small _it’s_ _Marcel actually. _

“How many times I tell you to bring your young men a good breakfast before you drag them out of bed. No finesse in your generation,” Antonio says to Louis, reprovingly.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, he’s not--”

“I’m not—” Marcel says, all red in the face.

“Now Louis is a good boy for all that, don’t misunderstand me, even if he does run around like a rooster without a roost,” Antonio says magnanimously, turning to Marcel.

“I’m actually a journalist,” Marcel manages, helpless as Antonio adds a scone to the pile in Marcel’s hands. He still handles them, Louis notices, because his hands are stupidly enormous.

“Oh, I can see that, young man, you for sure aren’t a money man with that suit,” Antonio looks severely at the flap of trouser rolling somehow both too loose and too high on Marcel’s long legs. 

“What,” Marcel says under his breath. Antonio pats the back of Marcel’s hand kindly.

“I’ve a cousin on suit row, you look him up. We’ll fix that inseam, tall fellow like you. Now Louis cares a lot more than he acts, don’t let him fool you,” Antonio says.

“For _ fuck’s _ sake,” Louis says, downing the rest of both of his coffees, one after the other. Coffee loves him.

“I, uh, I’m sure,” Marcel says.

"He's more sensitive than he lets on. He works too hard because he never has anyone to go home to," Antonio says with fathomless judgment, as if actually nice men grow on _ trees _in Metropolis.

“_Thanks _ Antonio, news to capture, Antonio, gotta go, Antonio,” Louis says, steering Marcel away by the elbow.

“Eat something!” Antonio yells as they bolt for the Planet’s back entrance.

***

All the editors are already in the conference room, even Zayn, wrapped in a hoodie with orange cuffs and a blue-and-orange-striped faux fur lining.

“I can see the wires, they’re right there,” Gloriana, Sports, is saying, clicking against her ipad with a long, crystal-studded fingernail, when Louis pokes his head around the door.

“It’s a stunt from the helicopter, I saw this in Las Vegas,” says Mark, Culture.

“Mmmm,” Louis clears his throat. The room ignores him.

“I cannot comprehend the world within which we now make our coverage decisions," Perry says. The room ignores him too.

"Oh god, BuzzFeed already has fifty flying man articles up," Mark says. "Metrics is gonna fucking kill us. They're gonna send some _ SEO _bastard over here."

"They're just aggregating. Vultures," Gloriana sniffs.

"I used to write _ news, _” Perry says mournfully.

“There aren’t any wires, I told you,” Zayn says. His face is so close to a mug of tea that he’s nearly steaming his nose, and his eyes are closed. “Must be. Some kind of mysterious. New Thing. It could be actual news.”

“_I _ told _ you,” _Louis squeaks, and the entire room continues to ignore him.

“Oh,” Marcel whispers softly from behind Louis, “Oh, no.”

“If you want to convince me this is news, we need something _better than _this goddamn fuzzy-ass, popsicle-broke youtube clip that all the other networks are showing, we need something _exclusive,” _Perry says, which is clearly a repetition of the last hour’s worth of stress and sleep deprivation. _Popsicle?! _Gloriana mouths.

“Ah, Louis, didn’t you have something to contribute,” Zayn says, eyes still closed. Anyone who didn’t know him might think he was being lethargic, but Louis can differentiate between shutting-out-the-world Zayn and bracing-for-impact-of-an-earth-shattering-scoop Zayn. Louis knows he’s about to sound completely crazy, but he also knew that Zayn will back him up. His friends are good people.

“I could take the day and go to the park with binoculars,” Gloriana says magnanimously.

“The cops said a _flying_ _guy in rocket boots _stopped the car chase,” Perry says. “What am I even supposed to do with that, it’s not even _Pride _yet--”

“SO,” Louis says. Marcel is making distressed, _ we shouldn’t be interrupting the conference room _noises behind him. “So uh, yeah, this flying guy—I actually--”

“You got something? Tell me you have a god damn lead, Louis,” Perry says, swiveling in his chair.

Louis’ mouth is half-open, a rush of words pressing up against the backside of his teeth, when he gets the sudden impression of hovering over a tank of very attentive piranhas. Zayn gives him big eyes from the back of the room: _ I’ll support you, but this is going to explode. All over everything _. He’s gripping the edge of the table. Perry leans forward, mustache drooping over a dismal cup of coffee from the lobby stand. Should’ve gone to Antonio.

The clip of the blurry man plays on the conference room tv screen. It’s going more viral than viral, the view numbers ticking up too fast to even go in sequence, so they jump by the hundreds. Metropolites must be glued to their phones on the subway and the buses and the sidewalks.

Louis suddenly sees his entire LexCorp investigation fade gently away under the landslide of that ticking little number. Small people, small houses, small stories rendered irrelevant by that goddamn number.

“Nothing, nothing at all,” Louis says, decision made in a flash. Zayn’s eyebrows rise toward the ceiling. “Gonna be out today, recon for LexCorp, just wanted to let you know. I wouldn’t spend too long on youtube, Perry. Don’t feed the algorithm.”

“Was this a _ necessary _ emergency interruption?” Perry says acerbically.

“You never know, it might have been,” Louis says cheerfully, backing away and trying not to make a face at Zayn.

Zayn swiftly writes _ WYD?? _on his scrap paper and holds it up behind Perry’s turned head.

“You never, ever, I, uh, I’ll tell you later, catch our excellent reporting tonight when I come back with a breakthrough,” Louis backs into Marcel, who catches the flail of Louis’ elbow right in his stomach. Whoops. He doesn't even wince, the freak. Louis winces himself in apologies.

“Gonna have to be some breakthrough,” Perry says, already back to glaring at the view numbers of the flying figure. And Metropolis didn’t even _know _how hot the guy was.

_ Hot _ aliens. Every single other news story in the world was doomed when someone published real info on the guy. Louis had better bring LexCorp down _ fast. _

***

“We're going out? Where are we going today?” Marcel asks, sounding puppy-dog excited and trailing behind Louis as he dodges a couple of morning-bleary writers. They’re all hovering over their phones, replaying the clip. Louis tries not to look out the Daily Planet’s window. He briefly considers climbing up to the gigantic Planet sculpture on top of the building and yelling, and then hates himself. He’s got _ important work to do. _

“_We _ are going nowhere,” Louis says, wheeling around. Marcel is still clutching the coffee from Antonio’s. Marcel seems the type to carry free things around out of obligation than actual desire, so he plucks it out of Marcel’s hand and takes a sip.

“You demonstrate a remarkable caffeine consumption,” Marcel says in a tone of wonder, like a scientist cataloguing a new butterfly. 

“Farmlands, love,” Louis says, and Marcel’s mouth stops on his next words, a little open and startled. _ Gosh _ his face is nice to look at, and Louis _ does not have time for this. _“Just because I’m glad you’re not exploded doesn’t mean you’re actually coming with me on this story. You’re sitting at your brand new desk, breaking in your brand new keyboard, on a brand new research mission for Investigative. I need you to review all the investor communications for LexCorp today and see if you find any discrepancies in their tax filings.”

“I already did that, it’s in your email,” Marcel says.

“You what?_ ” _Louis sputters. Marcel is looking at him over the coffee cup with some resolve.

“I want to come with you,” he enunciates, “I already reviewed their comms from the last year and did a cross-reference with a database exchange that I put into place with Gotham’s office of the Planet. We should probably make that standard.”

Louis had estimated that amount of paperwork to be ten day task and a story all by itself and it was cruel of Louis to even task Marcel with it, a not subtle ploy to keep Marcel off the actual story writing and sequester him into the dark torture of research. But Marcel only looks at Louis and offers his cup of coffee again.

It’s impossible to stay offended at somebody like this. Louis takes a sip. He pulls out his phone and there it is, files and files in his inbox from _ mkent@dailypla.net. _

“How?” Louis wonders, handing the coffee back.

“I don’t sleep much,” Marcel says in the tone of somebody who _ wins. _Louis recognizes it.

“This story matters to me,” Louis says.

Marcel looks at him steadily. He doesn’t blink. Louis thinks he can see the resolution in his jaw, all that lovely Midwestern sturdiness. He wants, in a sudden and absurd way, to get thrown into a hay bale. Surely they're soft. They always look soft.

“Aren’t we supposed to be partners on this story?” Marcel prods, “It matters to me too. It’ll matter to me more once I know what it is. You gotta let me in, at least a little.”

“I’m not a good partner,” Louis says, which is all in all a little more _ real _ than he means it to come out, but true in a deep way, what with the last several years of running around in Investigative feeling the world’s weight on his shoulders. “I mean. I mean this kind of story doesn’t really _ lend itself _ to partnership. It’s hard work. It sucks. Why would you even want to, honestly. Why would you do _ this _kind of journalism.”

“People,” Marcel says instantly. “I love people. I think they’re complicated, and lovely, and endless fun. So I guess it’s that journalism exposes you to so many people.”

“What about you?” Marcel asks when Louis doesn't say anything. What do you even say to _ that? _

Louis frowns. Marcel’s jaw is so sharp that he has the sudden urge to press the pad of his fingers against it. His skin is a perfect golden tan, like he’s still managing to get out to the cornfield every day instead of living under a perpetual cloud cover and commuting underground for a thousand hours in between draft calls and pitch meetings.

Marcel looks back. Absurdly, it catches Louis off guard. He feels discomfort shimming through him like an electric twitch. He jerks his gaze away from Marcel and back at his desk. There's a street full of broken houses that people used to live in and Louis knows, he _ knows _that someone did that.

“I care about the truth,” Louis answers curtly. “I want to get to the truth. People mostly just get in the way of that.” 

“I won’t,” Marcel says. It sounds real. Soft like an imaginary hay bale.

Louis blows out a breath. “Fine, come on,” he says, marching to the crowded desks where the weary and feral reporters are segregated from the civilized, and not looking back to see whether Marcel is keeping up.

"Excellent. I’m so excited,” Marcel says, disgustingly pleased and Louis gags. Marcel must be learning at an alarming rate, because he only smiles and offers the coffee again. Louis sighs, and takes it. 

“And stop looking at me like that!”

***

Louis’ tiny excuse for a desk is obscured by towers of papers and last week’s coffee cups.

"Right,” Louis says. “So I guess, if you’re gonna be useful, I should tell you what I’ve been doing.”

“Most things work that way,” Marcel says politely. “An exchange of information is considered productive in a knowledge work environment.”

Louis genuinely can’t tell whether he’s being mocked or not. He presses his lips together just in case, and brings out the stare that he perfected in ninth grade debate class, back when he was the too intense, too short, too loud scholarship kid already three strikes out with a fraying backpack and terribly unfashionable jeans.

“Ok, apparently you already know everything there is to know about LexCorp. But I’ve got some records you won’t have seen before, uuuuh, let me know if you see a folder that says _LC lease grant absolute fuckery _...” Louis fumbles around his catastrophic desk, a junkyard of bleeding ink and dusty files.

“Lease grant,” Marcel repeats. He looks underneath a small bronze lamp, and then pulls out a tiny pink notebook from his jacket pocket. It has a spiral made of some kind of plastic material with small glitter chunks in it. The cover says _ Metropolis is the Bestopolis! _

Louis needs an extra second to recover from the assault on his eyeballs, and he reels back in feigned double take. Marcel merely poses patiently, his pen hovering expectantly. Despite all the mild manners, he has an attitude about him that reminds Louis of his mother's cat, who used to perch in the windowsill too far for Louis to reach when he was eight and _ smirk _ at him.

“So. LexCorp. One of the top three companies in the city, defining member of the new techno companies, yadda yadda, LexCorp labs, LexCorp planes, LexCorp software, right? That place. Well, everybody knows that, but they also do some real estate.”

“The skyscraper?” Marcel suggests. 

“Well, even more mundane than that,” Louis pushes a couple of sour-smelling coffee cups into the trash, and finds a folder. “Aha,” he pulls it out. It had taken a week of trolling outer suburban bars to find someone who could point him to the deep-sink city office for overflow historical records, and this.

“Seven months ago there was a massive transfer of cash from LexCorp aerospace investors to some kind of secret project. Now that’s, that’s not super unusual. LexCorp is always spinning off experimental branches and getting capital for it, sometimes they become new wings of the company, sometimes not, the world is a nightmare and money is fake.”

“I’ve gotten that impression from earth systems,” Marcel says seriously. Louis snorts. 

“But then all that money just _ disappeared_. That's about as far as I got from an accountant who was fired from LexCorp three months ago for noticing. The usual explanation is that they’re developing deep military tech. But I've been investigating the cadence of the delivery of LexCorp shipments to the military, and the timing just didn’t add up.”

“So, so it’s corporate fraud? We’re investigating a corporate fraud?” Marcel says, struggling to follow. 

Louis pulls his blueprints out of the folder. There’s nowhere to put them on the crowded desk so he half-heartedly tries to smooth over a couple of phone chargers and a long-dead air plant before dumping them over the stacks of other folders and a buried keyboard. His desktop makes a plaintive noise, like a wet bird being poked with a towel.

“We’re investigating _ this_,” Louis says. He lays the papers out, lining up the edges to make the actual map visible.

It's a shitty printout on letter paper of blueprint and zoning files that Louis has stored on the Daily Planet’s secure file system, and then in a backup on the unconnected drive that he keeps locked up at home, and then again on another thumb drive that he gave, for some impenetrable reason, to Antonio. Who knows. It’s LexCorp. People who ask questions tend to disappear.

Marcel looks down at the rows and rows of buildings. So many small homes stacked on top of each other.

“Southside Metropolis,” Marcel says.

“Oh, what, you know it?” Louis asks, surprised.

“I know Metropolis from overhead pretty well,” Marcel says, and then makes a strange little face. “I mean, I look at a lot of? Maps?”

“Ok, bizarro,” Louis says, “Well you’re right. This is Southside. Dense, low income housing, subsidized projects, some of them. One bridge in and out, tolls both ways, schools that Metropolis downtown would rather die than pay taxes into. Really nice pickup basketball games on thursday nights organized by a guy named Rodrigo. They’re two miles and approximately a galaxy away from downtown. You don’t go there unless you know how to go there, ok?”

“Which you do,” Marcel guesses.

“Of course I do,” Louis scoffs. “And here’s why I went: LexCorp owns significant real estate all over Metropolis, and most people don’t remember that because a lot of it is a holdover from after World War II. LexCorp was mostly aerospace back then, right? But in the infrastructure push of the war, LexCorp was granted special government permissions to control these neighborhoods in exchange for production in planes. And they’ve just kind of...held on there, in these weird little pockets like Southside. Zoning, housing, everything--it’s all run entirely by LexCorp.”

Louis pauses for breath. Marcel looks down at the blueprints with a frown.

“What does this mark mean, the date and the code?” Marcel asks.

“It’s a demolition date,” Louis says. “They’re tearing Southside down. That’s what I found out. They’re going to tear every single building down, and evict them all. Even the homeowners, because their property rights were always on the grounds that LexCorp was letting them. The schools. The corner bodegas. The swimming pool and the goddamn library.”

“No,” Marcel breathes. Louis shakes his head.

“The city isn’t going to stop them. I don’t even think the city _ can _ stop them. LexCorp must want something much more badly than it wants the goodwill of Metropolis, but stories like...poor neighborhood is going to get the heavy end of the stick because of zoning documents from seventy years ago? That doesn't exactly make the front page for weeks, and it takes weeks of a front page feature for Lex Luthor to even look in our direction out the window of his stupid private plane. So we need to find out why, and we need to make it _ interesting_. Sexy. Amazing. Something that the city can't look away from. That's the only thing that'll make a dent against Lex Luthor.”  
  
"The--city," Marcel says, a catch in his voice and for an instant, Louis thinks that he was about to say something else, about someone else, but he doesn't.   
  
"Bring Metropolis against him, it's the biggest weapon we've got," Louis says. He doesn't add that it's the _only _weapon they've got, paper and ink and opinion, the shimmering illusive power of the press that only means something if you believe, with extreme determination, that it means something.

Marcel is still staring at the blueprints with their death date written in dispassionate administrative overlay.

“People _ live _ there,” Marcel says.

Louis starts stuffing the plans back into the folders, and looking for the badge he’d had made up at Gloriana’s sister’s print shop three days ago. Against the odds, he finds it in one of the coffee cups that he hasn’t yet thrown into the garbage.  
  
“People,” Louis echoes, “Not according to LexCorp. Ready for your first break-in?”


	2. IN WHICH OUR HERO(ES?) MAKE A DISCOVERY AND OVERESTIMATE THEIR ABILITIES

“What in the planet was that, didn't you have another story to tell the editors about,” Zayn says, clattering down the stairs and into the lobby after Louis and Marcel. He’s brought Niall with him for maximum harassment. 

“Nobody at the Daily Planet works except for me,” Louis informs Marcel, and Marcel’s face flickers back into a smile. 

Marcel is wearing a blue shirt that’s far too small; he looks like a handsome mannequin wrongly dressed. Louis had made Marcel leave his absurd bright plaid behind in exchange for the Louis-Gets-Cold-Easily blue flannel that _ Zayn _ makes _ Louis _keep in the break room. Nobody at the Planet works but they do get very codependent. 

“Louis. I feel like, the LexCorp story, maybe it needs to wait now, we could have a little Investigative Team Meeting,” Zayn says in a rush, a lot of words in a row for Zayn and enough to make him stop and catch his breath from the exhaustion of expressing a complete thought around more than three people. Niall pats him on the back.

“I’m happy to take notes,” Marcel says.

"Nonsense,” Louis says, stalwart in the face of resistance. “And _ Marcel _ isn’t fully _ Investigative _,” 

Marcel’s face falls, even behind the glasses, Louis can tell his eyes have gone down the floor, and he feels very bad, three coffees past inhibition and jittery beyond measure with the weight of the story. 

“I only meant, he hasn’t been here,” Louis says weakly, “But he’s here now! Leave us, we're on a mission!”

“Baby’s big day out!” Niall crows, bouncing up to Marcel's side and gives him some kind of punch-hug combo. 

“What?” Marcel says, “I am a fully mature human--” 

"Stop bothering the baby," Louis snaps, "I’m taking him out to our first field mission. Might want to google custom manufacturers in case you need to special order a coffin for someone that tall.”

Zayn sidesteps the tussling in his usual Hollywood-villain-glide and gives Louis an arm punch of his own. 

"What are you doing about, you know, _ the special interview, the other story, _ now that there’s _ video," _he says in a low tone. Three security guards gag over bad coffee in the corner. "We need a scoop on something a little bigger than Southside," 

"Nothing," Louis hisses back, eyeing the guards with their crisp _ LC _ badge logos. "Because I need _ this _ evidence and _ this _ story to go live, _ then _we can break the… my interview." 

"Don't you think that _ special access interviews _take precedence?" Zayn says. “Like, if say, I dunno, you discovered a new--” 

“A new what?” Marcel asks. 

"--a world-changing story, say," Zayn continues, "Maybe you shouldn't be multitasking on _ that _\--"

"Shut it, what I _ have _ is the entirety of Southside about to get blown off the map," Louis says fiercely. 

Zayn holds up his hands. “All I’m saying is it’s important, Louis.” 

Louis throws his hands up, mirroring. “I know! I’ve got it under control!” 

"Must be some interview," Marcel says. He's got Niall in an easy if bemused headgrip and Niall is drawing flowers in marker on Marcel’s exposed wrist.

"Children," Louis says.

"Monsters," Zayn agrees. And then he fixes Louis with a calculating stare. "Fine, I'll keep your little secret,"

"Big, definitely a big secret," Louis says, thinking of the blue suit and all that it did _ not _conceal. Zayn rolls his eyes. 

"But end of the day, Louis, and we better get something for _ both stories. _ Ok? You can’t keep running everything out of your own head like you’re a one-man army.” 

Louis pats Zayn on the arm, which he thinks is very generous considering that he’s owed a restorative arm punch in the near future. “One-man army, I’m clearly a one-man air force,” he scoffs, thinking of the sun and the clouds and the buildings from above and the inner-ear-panic-glory of drifting over them. “Hey, want to know the difference between an editor and a serial killer?” 

“No,” Zayn says loudly. 

“Sometimes serial killers take breaks,” Louis finishes. Every single one of them groans, including Marcel. 

Niall pats Marcel on the shoulder. “Don’t let Louis fall out of any windows, he has a tendency to get overexcited,” he says seriously. 

“It’s been a lot of coffee,” Marcel agrees. 

Louis frowns between them. “That’s unfair,” he says. Niall smiles gently, but somehow, it manages to be menacing. 

“Let us know if you see anything….out of this world,” Niall says with suggestive eyebrows, and Louis makes a heart shape back with his hands. 

“You stay away from explosions, and LexCorp goons, and keep your feet on the ground,” Zayn says. Thankfully the security guards have vanished up the elevator with their privileged keycards, but Louis still twitches a little. 

“We’ll be careful,” Marcel says, although he has no right to say it and his eyes are wide with concern. 

“You’re no fun at all, dads,” Louis says. 

***

The LexCorp office building looks like any self-important office highrise on the outside, which is probably what leads to Louis underestimating the ease with which they can slip past all of its layers and get inside. 

To his credit it does go well at first. Marcel and Louis wear nondescript beige jackets that Louis had gotten from an army surplus store, and the fake card only gets a flicker of a glance from the bored desk clerk, who buzzes them through the entry gate and up the elevators after Louis throws his hands up over the machine and yells “_ I told you to get these cards reset, god, Franklin!” _

_ “Well maybe if you weren’t surgically attached to your smartphone, you wouldn’t have demagnetized it!” _Marcel yells back, surprising and delighting Louis. 

So they made it easily up to the top floor of the offices, deep into the belly of the beast. Louis levels a significant look at Marcel in the elevators until Marcel catches up, and reaches out his hand for a tentative high-five. 

“What about cameras,” Marcel whispers. 

Louis cocks an eyebrow toward the blank, empty corners of the elevator. “See any? Internally, having cameras is as big a security risk as _ not _having them on the outside. Luthor doesn’t want anybody lip-reading the conversations that happen here.” 

The top floor is a grey, sterile collection of unfriendly offices with their doors shut, which suits Louis just fine. They walk briskly toward the one at the end of the hallway. 

“This one. He’s on paternity leave,” Louis whispers to Marcel. He’d overheard it at a bar--a far different bar than the Southside hole-in-the-wall where Rodrigo had wiped tears of anger and helplessness into a crumpled napkin. The rich person bar, on the other hand, had been shining and gleaming and served cocktails that blew flavored smoke into people’s faces. It had been a favorite of the LexCorp executive whose nameplate was on the office door that Marcel is easily--_ shockingly _easily--breaking into. 

“I think I broke the bolt,” Marcel whispers, letting them in. 

“You were _ made _for this,” Louis says. Marcel’s entire face contorts with discomfort but also something like suppressed laughter, and Louis feels the gentle glow of satisfaction spread down to his toes. 

“LexCorp gives paternity leave?” 

“Lex is surprisingly progressive when it comes to his evil empire of minions specifically,” Louis says, prowling around the space. The office has a massive computer under the desk and a sleek monitor, but Louis ignores these because there’s no way they’d get anything but arrested for even breathing in the direction of LexCorp tech. 

Besides which, evil plans always end up on paper. Louis has learned _ that _ from the past few years of immersion in Investigative. Even the evil at corporations is bureaucratic, and comes with its own imponderable, evil-adjacent red tape. Probably evil secretaries, Louis imagines. And _ voila _, there are two big filing cabinets in the corner. 

“What are we looking for?” Marcel asks.

“This is kind of where my plan stopped,” Louis admits. "Anything related to Southside, building plans, I don't know. Construction?" 

They systematically search through files. Everything is boring boring boring corporate boring, and Louis is starting to feel his heart thump uncomfortable close in his chest, when Marcel makes a considering noise. 

“Something?” Louis turns on the carpet. 

“I don’t know,” Marcel says. He quickly thumbs the thick ream of papers like a flipbook and then makes a more certain noise. “Ok, it’s something.” 

Louis blinks. It was only a blur of paper corners as far as he saw. “What could you have possibly read in that time,” he starts, but then the office door rattles. 

Louis grabs Marcel by shoulder and pushes them to the first refuge he can find: the closet door on the other side of the office. The broken bolt hangs in the outer office doorframe and stymies the door opener for a moment, just long enough to Louis and Marcel to throw themselves into the dark cramped space and shut the closet door behind them. 

They don't move. They’re in the dark, lit only by the crack under the door and the dim, ominous glow of something technical, a big metal rack box with lights and dials. Louis guesses it’s part of LexCorp’s telecommunications systems. He _ hopes _it isn’t their security. 

Someone comes in. Louis holds his breath. There are steps on the carpet, just feet away. Had they left the filing cabinet open? Louis can't for the life of him remember. The steps don't move faster, nor is there a shout of alarm. 

Louis peers at the light from under the closet door. He can feel nervous sweat start to warm under the cheap collar of his uncomfortable jacket. Marcel is warm, too warm, like a heatbox now that Louis is pressed up so close to him. He’s taller than Louis realized. 

They hang in the dark, and there's a moment of heady silence when Louis is sure that the closet door is open to rip open-- but then the steps retreat, and there’s the sound of a door closing. 

“Mmm,” Marcel whispers woefully, and Louis realizes he’s clamping a hand over Marcel’s mouth.

“We should wait,” Louis whispers, pulling his hand back. “LexCorp security rounds take fifteen minutes per floor. He was probably just checking the lock _ that you broke, _now he’s making a note to maintenance. These guys don’t like to do more than they’re being paid for.” 

“How long have you been _ planning _this?” Marcel whispers back. “How do you know all this? Perry cannot approve of these methods."

Louis rolls his eyes, not that Marcel can probably see it. Louis can just see the outline of his glasses and his mouth and his attractive nose. Geez, when a guy’s _ nose _is attractive, you know you’re distracted. 

“Just wait, it’s fine,” Louis whispers. 

Marcel heaves a sigh. Louis flicks him on the jacket lapel. Marcel sighs again, this time slow and drawn-out. 

_ If you don't fucking watch it, _ Louis thinks to himself, _ you're gonna get a fucking massive crush on this Oklahoma Junior Ranger for Sincerely Anxious Reporting, and that never ends well for anyone. Not when you're clearly from two different worlds. _

“Marcie, tell me about Farmville," Louis whispers, mostly to distract himself from that blindingly terrible thought. 

“What,” Marcel whispers back blankly. Louis waves a hand. They’re compressed together into the closet space so it brushes against Marcel’s thick suit and turns out more like a caress. Louis, stupidly, _ blushes. _

“Farmville,” he whispers valiantly, “The land of the morning roosters. The place where the wheat grows. Wells Fargo. Where they crowned you varsity prom king.”

“Are you trying to ask about where I grew up,” Marcel says, his face suddenly another dawning smile, no less lovely for being lit from underneath by the light of the closet door. 

“Obviously,” Louis whispers.

“You are so weird,” Marcel says, marveling. 

Louis gives an inaudible, tiny gasp and carefully mimes pushing Marcel away. They’re cramped into three and a half feet of electrical engineering, so it goes nowhere. Louis suspects Marcel wouldn’t have moved even if Louis _ had _pushed him; he feels hard as a rock under Louis’ palm. 

“It’s Smallville, actually,” Marcel says. His face quirks into another smile, this one fond and a little self-deprecating, the face of somebody opening their childhood bedroom door.

“It’s what?” Louis likes this version of Marcel’s smile too. 

“I’m not from Indiana, I’m from Kansas. Smallville.”

Louis looked up at the ceiling. There’s an ominous red light that dims and brightens like a wrathful eye. Quaint. “Ok, you have got to be shitting me with that one.”

“No,” now Marcel is silently laughing, really. He almost sounds out of breath, maybe even a little giddy. Louis supposes that getting exploded on your first day of work and trapped in a closet in enemy territory on your second will do that to you. “No, I’m not kidding, I grew up in a place called Smallville.”

“Did you have cows, you had cows didn’t you,” Louis says. “For fuck’s sake. You got up every day at six.”

“Five,” Marcel says serenely, “Six is for _ town _folk, and our farm was actually outside of Smallville proper. Jonathan and Martha Kent would never have abided such laziness. I learned to drive on a tractor.”

"I hate you," Louis says happily. "Please tell me more."

***

Twenty minutes later they've crept out of a silent office and the elevators are in sight. Louis is just about to breathe a sigh of unadmitted relief, when a LexCorp employee rounds the corner in front of them. He’s a strong looking guy in a nondescript grey blazer and a buttoned up white shirt. His hair is close-cropped, and he’s got big, friendly eyes. 

“Hey,” the man says. 

“Morning,” Louis says. Marcel says nothing, which is probably for the best, because Louis can all but feel the anxiety radiating off him. He’s struck by the urge to do a lot of things once they get out of here: buy Marcel a nice lunch, show him the Planet’s favorite bar near the fish market, and generally say _ good job. _

“I’m Liam,” the guy says. _Great. _Liam’s got a bright-eyed, New Employee look about him and a very slight country drawl, probably recently transferred into this downtown office. And he sticks out a hand, so yeah, definitely. 

“We must’ve missed each other. New to this floor?” Louis says, shaking it. 

“Yes,” Liam says, with an easy smile. He reminds Louis a bit like Marcel, actually. Two seconds and a tip for the best coffee, and they’ll be out of here. “Haven’t seen you around here.”

"We're security," Louis says confidently. 

Liam frowns at him. It's a gentle frown, puzzled, and a smidge regretful. “Yes. Well. The thing is. _ I'm _security."

  


***

  


“Marcie, _ get out of here,” _Louis screeches. Liam had moved in a flash, faster than Louis could even blink, yanking Louis’ hand forward and catching his whole arm in some kind of manipulative, very unfair wrestling move. 

Marcel, bless his oatmeal-flavored soul, freezes. Liam is already looking at Marcel’s many inches of farm-fed height in a calculating way, like he can throw Louis into Marcel and bring both of them down until reinforcements come. 

But Louis is used to being the smallest party in the brawl, so he fights _dirty. _He throws himself into Liam, jamming his heel into the guy's instep, and both of them stagger into the far wall. Liam lets out an _oof, _and hits something in his pocket. A nasty, blaring alarm starts ringing from the ceiling. 

Marcel takes two steps towards them. 

“Go,” Louis yelps, “I’ll be fine, it's fine!”

“This is actually not fine,” Liam says sadly. 

“Get out!” Louis roars, making a face at Marcel. He may be willing to risk his own safety and sanity in the belly of LexCorp but he hadn't expected to sacrifice the newbie on the altar of justice, and besides which this is the only chance they’ve got to get the hard evidence out of the building before the rest of security descends upon them. And Louis feels a protective spark of _rage_ at the idea of some LexCorp goon trying to scare Marcel. That's Louis' job and no one else's. 

"I'm fine," Louis shouts, "I know how to deal with these people, they won't hurt me." 

Marcel doesn't exactly look reassured; Louis can see skepticism manifest instantly all over the set of his handsome face. Of _ course _ he's a Justice type, too noble and too jaw-gritted-idealistic to even imagine abandoning anyone. It's been a long time since anyone has spent the extra second to look at Louis like they know he's lying. 

But again, Louis knows how to fight dirty. "I will _ get you fired _if you don't run right now," he roars. 

Marcel looks from Louis to the papers in his hands. He looks agonized, but something snaps over his face and he seems to make a decision. “I’ll be back,” he says. 

Louis even believes him for a second. But then Marcel is running for the stairs, and Louis lets it go.

“The elevator!” Louis yells, but Marcel is right because the elevator door suddenly opens and a security team piles out. 

***

Lex Luthor does nothing subtly when he can do it with a stupendous waste of resources and an even greater volume of ego, so he lands on the roof of his skyscraper in a helicopter. 

Louis, held firmly in Liam’s iron grip, spits into the helicopter wind and gets it thrown back into his face. And isn't that just corporate America, Louis thinks.

“How much does it cost to maintain this helipad?” Louis yells over the blast of the wind. 

Liam says nothing in response, but he does sigh. Louis can feel it even through Liam’s stupidly intense hold. 

“I mean there must be permits to pay for,” Louis muses. Lex Luthor is stepping out of the helicopter like the wind and the spinning blades don’t mean anything, like the laws of physics will follow his command the second he spares a moment to think about it. He’s scarier than Louis even remembers, a viper in a dark suit. 

“How much does he pay _ you _, in comparison. 401K matching or something? Probably less than how much he has to pay off air traffic control for this stupid helicopter, you ever think about that?” Louis says. Liam gives him a shake, not hard enough to be anything but a warning. 

“Stop it,” Liam says. He sounds strained and concerned, like someone way out of his depth at LexCorp, and Louis has a moment of wanting to take him aside and tell him _ seriously, the paternity benefits aren’t even worth it. _

“Look, just, they take security very seriously around here. Mr. Luthor could get you into a great deal of--”

“Oh, sure,” Louis says. "Does he use this to commute to the beach and beat traffic? Do you guys have a union?" 

"I mean it, this is not a joke," Liam says. The guy almost sounds sincerely worried. 

Lex marches across the runway. Louis finally regards him, because Liam seems to _ really want him to, _and maybe just a little bit because Lex is terrifying, carries the force of a black hole around with him at all times. Louis remembers that face in high school, all warmth and no sincerity, all power and no earning it. 

“So the Daily Planet wasn’t content to simply generate lies from the office today,” Lex says, looking Louis up and down. “Interesting to learn that the press is expanding to espionage.” 

Louis stares back, chin raised. “Cool to know one journalist counts as the whole Daily Planet,” he says. “Your staff let me in, I’m sure that’s on camera. I had an interview.” He shrugs one shoulder, as unconcerned as he can make it look. “No one would expect _ the press _to keep track of your complicated office building, no signs.” 

“You’re on dangerous territory, Louis Tomlinson,” Lex says. Louis just bets he looked it up in the helicopter on the way over just to be intimidating. Or maybe Lex bothered to remember high school, but Louis doubts it.

“I know what you're doing,” Louis says forcefully. “You think you can do whatever you want in this city? You can't. Not even you. You think no one can stop you? We're already stopping you.”

“You’ve had an obsession with LexCorp for a long time,” Lex spits back—and Louis counts it as a point that he’s gotten under his snake skin. “Don’t think we haven’t noticed_ . _ Surely you’re not _ that _ big of an idiot. _ Tomlinson. Tell _ me the Luthor scholarship fund didn’t entirely go to waste on you.” 

Louis’ face twists. So he _ did _remember. “That was a long time ago, and has nothing to do with this.” But of course it still curls in his gut like sour milk. Lex Luthor has that effect on people, reminding them of their own fragilities. But Louis has worked hard to never give in to shame, and he raises his chin defiantly. 

“I’ll break this story, whatever it is. I pay attention to what you do. And I always have. I'm not blinded by your company. People like you assume no one's watching, assume no one's gonna put the pieces together, but I always will. I’m watching you, I’m thinking about what you’re doing."

“And, yet,” Lex says, “I’ve never thought about you at all.” He smiles. It’s a cruel thing, made crueler by the believable sincerity of his eyes, the practiced smooth warmth in his loose, relaxed gestures. But _ the smile _ is the real piece, a gash splitting the mirage. “And thankfully, after today, I won't have to.”

Louis all but explodes into a frenetic, anxious, angry laugh. It’s like high school and bullies and locker rooms all over again. _ You’ll be sorry. _

“I’ve never been sorry for a thing in my life,” Louis says. 

Lex blinks, a friction in his smooth smile.

“Go for it,” Louis spits, “Swing your terrible lawyers at me. Boy, it’ll make a great story when you try to arrest a journalist. Can’t wait to profile the experience, reflect on for-profit policing and the _ very _long arm of the law. I’d love to add that to my piece on Southside, just try me.” 

“Hmm, that does sound intriguing,” Lex says. He sounds calm and thoughtful and maybe even warm. Louis remembers that it was the same way back in high school. Lex would sound trustworthy and considerate right up to the point where he’d tell his friends to jump you after school because you’d made him lose his place in the first rank spot, or the way he’d spread rumors like poison about someone who’d accidentally brushed by him in the hall. 

“You can’t do anything to me,” Louis spits. “Not really. Slap a fine on me, call the cops, whatever. But don’t act like this, like you’re above everyone.” 

Lex looks out. Louis is aware, suddenly and sharply, that they’re very high. Metropolis glints under a bright sun, sharp lines of skyscrapers scalpeling to the sky.

“So you’re looking for a story. I can tell you how the story goes,” Lex says.

“How terribly unfortunate that a journalist rashly broke into our offices. And the saddest part is, our offices were under construction,” Lex continues. He sounds truly sad. “This roof especially. See the construction signs? So unfortunate that you disregarded all of these very clear barricades in your foolish—oh, brave, but ultimately _ illegal— _ attempt to follow a story you were _ obsessed _ with. Deranged, really, that’s what I think they could suggest. Oh, tastefully of course. But it’s not a _ real _story. It has all the hallmarks of a delusional paranoia. Especially the part where you run yourself off the roof.”

“What?” Louis says. His stomach clenches. 

“Liam, throw him off the roof,” Lex says. 

“What?” Liam says blankly. 

“Throw him. Off the roof.” Lex has already turned back to the helicopter, like it’s not even worth his time to watch. 

There’s a quiver of motion through Liam’s arm. Louis freezes, heart in his throat. The buildings blur and dazzle in the sun, the helicopter rotors roar in his ears. Louis can’t move, can’t think. He looks for a hot and desperate second toward the horizon. There, up in the sky, is it a bird--

“No,” Liam says. He clenches his hand around Louis’ arm but it feels like it’s anchoring them down, like it’s an unconscious, protective gesture. 

Lex wheels back around. He’s no longer smiling. “What did you say?” 

“I said no,” Liam says with some emphasis. “I’m sorry, but _ what? _ You want me to _ throw him off the roof?” _

Louis finds his feeling rushing back in under all the adrenaline, his paralysis unlocking, and he uses it to flip Lex Luthor off. 

“Not everyone around here is a psychopath, who’da figure,” Louis says. 

“You work for _ me,” _Lex hisses at Liam the Security Guard, Louis' new favorite person.

“That's insane. I’m letting him go,” Liam says, and he does_ , _releasing his iron grip on Louis’ arm. 

Louis takes three unsteady steps to the side, backing away from the entire thing--the madman CEO and the helicopter and the crazy security guard choosing to take a stand. God, there are so many good headlines in it. He pats his pockets and curses himself for not gluing a goddamn recorder to his actual torso, so that maybe _ one time _he’d be prepared. He eyes the door leading down to the stairs. Adrenaline is making his ears ring. He deserves another cup of coffee.

“There’s a limit,” Liam says firmly, although he still sounds shocked. His eyes are enormous. Poor country kid, Louis just bets that he and Marcel could commiserate together over a beer. He's going to have to rescue Liam, he makes a mental note of it. “There’s a big limit. A _ big _ limit. I may be your security but I’m not here to _ harm--” _

“I have to do _ everything _ myself,” Lex hisses as Liam keeps talking, and he lunges forward, crosses the distance between them in an instant, connects his outstretched palms with the front of Louis’ discount beige jacket, and _ pushes. _

Louis feels his heels connect with a rough edge of concrete, feels the rush of air, and feels, for just a moment, the tight and poisonous closeness of Lex Luthor, like a horrible, reversed intimacy. The backs of his heels hit on the rough edge of the roof, bruising down to the bone.

And then he falls.

***

Three stories down out of the LexCorp tower’s thirty, Louis is somewhere between a flashback through second grade and an _ I love you _blasted out psychically to his family and the world at large just to cover all the bases, when the Metropolis Flying Man catches him out of the air.

“I think your investigation is turning a little dangerous for a news article,” Harry says reprovingly. He sounds weirdly upset about it, like he was promised something different.

Or Louis thinks that’s what he sounds like. Louis is still screaming, so it’s difficult to be quite certain. Harry’s caught him around the waist too, and he may not be dead now, but it still _ hurts. _Louis dangles around the unnaturally strong, rock-solid arms of an alien. He’s winded, and his ribs hurt, and second grade was stupid because they had the tiles with the math things on them and Louis had been terrible at that besides which there were prefixes to learn. What a waste of a flashback.

“AAAAH! FUCK! Fuck.” Louis finishes, the scream trailing into a hoarse whisper. 

Harry drifts them gently upward, and away. It’s smooth like a hot air balloon this time, and the LexCorp tower disappears mercifully quickly. They end up somewhere between upper downtown and its merge into the business district, where the commute gets particularly snarled. Louis sucks in cold air and takes the opportunity to notice that he’s still real, all the brilliant blue and red, even the cape is there. 

“Hello again,” Harry The Superhero says with a face that seems chipper in such proximity to attempted murder.

“Were you _ waiting _ or something,” Louis demands, hitting him on the shoulder. He supposes being rescued should put one in a deferential and grateful place, but his insides are pulled between near-death panic and flying-euphoria, and it's a defining personality trait to _ never _be deferential.

“I told you, I'm just generally trying to protect Metropolis. Saving people is my job,” Harry says. It sounds…oddly defensive.

Sunbeams ricochet off the windows of the LexCorp tower, and they stream out all around them. It’s gold and clouds and the sky is _ bright. _It's like he's gone from hell to heaven, and it's a purgatory of a whiplash. Harry smiles gently down at him.

“You’re ok, I’ve got you,” Harry says. 

"Ugh," Louis says. “Don’t get caught on video doing it, at least. That’s the _ last _thing my story needs.” 

Harry blinks at him. He glances at the skyscrapers around them. “There is a CCTV circuit for most major corporations in the Metropolis downtown,” he says doubtfully, “But I can move in the path of the obscured--”

“No, just, stop it,” Louis says. He’s not clinging into Harry’s extremely strong arms with his fingers like claws, he’s _ not. _ “I just mean I need to finish this story before you go getting on tv for saving me or anybody else. What are you even _ doing here _. On YouTube, it looked like you were fixing electrical grids on the coast. I thought I had at least a day to finish this up.” 

“I can _ fly,” _Harry says in his impossible tone of very gentle judgment. “The first time was unexpected. But this time, you got thrown off a roof. I kind of decided to start keeping an eye out. But I have to insist, finishing this story no longer seems like a wise course of action. This investigation is clearly exceeding acceptable risk for journalistic inquiry.” 

Louis has run out of all the air in his lungs, so he takes a breath, and transitions to a profound _ ugh _noise. Harry is a blinding vision in bright blue, and he’s not even squinting in the sun. The wind whips moppy, curly hair around his face. They’re so high, they’re still so high. The small freaked-out mammalian ancestor in Louis’ brain is not happy about it. 

“Yeah well,” Louis says, “This investigation is my job.” 

Harry frowns, and it looks in the vein of _ I’m not mad I’m just disappointed. _ Louis has never responded well to this kind of attitude. He frowns back, ignoring the fact that he’s gripping into this bizarre alien’s arms, that they’re flying. 

“I was going to get the situation under control. Eventually.” 

“That Lex Luthor does not seem like a good person, or a safe person to be around,” Harry says. He sounds disapproving. He flips Louis easily around into a more comfortable position, like before, facing Harry with the toes of his shoes on Harry’s giant, red boots. It gives him the semblance of standing in the air. 

“Nobody on this planet is safe to be around,” Louis informs him. He risks letting go to hit Harry on the shoulder again, a distraction from the fact that with his other hand, he’s reaching into his pocket and flipping on a recorder. “Forget about me, let’s talk about you! Alien Harry, you didn’t stick around long enough last time to explain your goals.” 

“I think you should leave the saving to the people whose job it is to save,” the hot, _ judgmental _alien says. 

Louis narrows his eyes. And blinks away some cold-air tears, and narrows them again. 

“No one knows who you are,” Louis says pointedly. “Why should we trust you? Why should _ humanity _believe a thing you say?” 

“I don’t—” an expression of frustration crosses Harry’s face. Louis gives him a scrutinizing stare. “I saved you!” 

“Yeah, well,” Louis says. “Do you pay taxes? Do you vote for a political party? The people are gonna want to _ know, _Harry.” 

Harry gives him a look that’s strangely calculating, like he’s making a decision. Louis tries very hard to ignore the eye-watering wind and act like he flies every day. It’s still magical. It’s still unutterably, incredibly magical.

“So investigate me, how about,” Harry says. “I've seen the videos. I know people want to know. I want you to do the story on me.” 

_ Oh my god, _ Louis thinks, and _ Zayn is gonna owe me forever, _but the still-pissy, just-fell-off-a-roof journo in him slaps Harry on the arm again, recklessly. Interview might as well begin now.

“Why this?” Louis pushes, “Why talk to me? Why not descend on Washington DC and talk to world leaders. Why on earth would you come to Metropolis, and start doing _ this, _why now, why like this?” 

The sun shines behind Harry, eerily like a halo. Louis tries not to get distracted by it.   
  
“Because I didn’t want to become the property of a world leader,” Harry says forcefully. “Because this _ thing, _this story, it's important to get it right. I know I’m an alien, but I’m also--I grew up here. I grew up in a family, and we kept it a secret all these years because my parents were afraid that if anybody found out before I was ready, that I wouldn’t be able to be myself.” 

“And who’s _ that,” _Louis interrupts, unable to help himself. 

“Someone who wants to help,” Harry says. “_ That’s _ why I’m doing it this way. That’s the point of Metropolis. This is the city--it’s _ the _City, you know? If I want to help humanity, then it’s a good enough place to start in the biggest, craziest city that I know. If I want to help humanity, then the people I want to talk to are the press. That’s what I wanted. I want you to watch me do what I do and then write about it so that people know, beyond what some politician or conspiracy theory says about me.” 

“Do you,” he starts hesitantly, and then he stops. He grips Louis a little more firmly, and when he looks up again there’s something strangely familiar in his face, questioning and sweet. Louis has a moment of feeling like he _ knows _Harry, which is silly. Two rescues do not a friendship make, Louis tells himself sternly.

“Do you think you could start to trust me? A little?” 

“That’s not my job,” Louis says at last. 

Louis looks up, looks out at the skyscrapers, and he taps his fingers where they’re gripping Harry’s arms, _ oh my god they’re flying, _and he sucks in a breath of calm.

“Here’s the thing. People trust what we put in ink. They may pretend that they don’t, but ultimately, when the world is as complicated as it is and when the big things change, they look to places like the Daily Planet for something that’s at least a little bit like the truth. And that’s what I do--I tell them what we should print. You may be amazing and extraordinary and like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and yeah, maybe you can do all of these things. Maybe you’re gonna change everything. But I’m the investigator._ I _ do the interview. _ I _ask the questions. I decide what we print.”

For some reason, Harry _ smiles. _For some reason, it makes Louis’ ears burn, the gentle twist in it, the warm and comforting way that he feels suddenly like he’s done something very right without even realizing it. 

“All right,” Harry says, looks up at the clouds and into the sun without even blinking, and then back down, and says, “Tonight. You can ask me anything you want.” 

***

Louis gets dropped off in the middle of Center Park. It’s a mile walk to the Daily Planet, so he has time to pull out the miraculously-still-in-his-back-pocket phone and text Marcel. 

_ You ok Prom King?? _

_ Louis! I’ve been at the police department, _ a reply comes swiftly, _ but they don’t seem to believe me. I am considering filing a brief with the chain of command. I have three legal precedents on journalist harassment so far. Are you all right? _

Louis snorts, but it comes out so unexpectedly fond he's glad no one is around to hear it. He can just imagine Marcel trying to beat down all of Metropolis PD with a departmental handbook and court case briefs pulled up on his phone. But he can practically hear the worry in Marcel’s texts. Thank god the kid wasn’t on the roof. He makes a Lead Investigator Executive Decision to not mention the whole "Lex Luthor tried to murder me" thing.

_ Lost cause, Farmlands, but I’m fine. _

_ They seemed a bad sort. I cannot believe that Lex Luthor would have just let you go. _

Louis frowns at the screen. _ It was fine, _ he writes swiftly. _ I’m fine. _

Dots arise, and then stop. Louis can practically see Marcel twitching over the phone halfway between wanting to chastise Louis with his righteous innocent indignation and wanting to see if he’s ok. He adds overprotective to his mental list of Midwest attributes, as represented by exactly one rookie reporter. What a dork. What a cute, easily ruffled dork that Louis wants to have ice cream with, geez.

_ Fine is a relative word when it’s being applied in the context of surviving a situation that represented an unusual level of human threat. _

Louis smiles at nothing, broadly and insanely. 

“Are you ok?” asks a passing Metropolite with some concern.

“Fuck off,” Louis says cordially, and the Metropolite nods and continues on her way, appeased that Louis is one of them. 

_ MARCIE. Take a nap. Shake it off. Welcome to the Planet! Meet me tonight with those papers you found ? _

The dots come and go again, but quicker this time. 

_ Dinner? _ Comes a text back, and lord help him, Louis’ heart actually does a small terrible flutter in his chest. _ What the fuck Tomlinson, _ he thinks to himself. He has the biggest scoop of the century—no, of the _ planet _ to deliver in a one-two punch after he manages to bring LexCorp down—he’s got to interview Harry tonight, he can _ not _ afford to be thinking things like _ maybe the amazing miraculous alien interview will reschedule so I can get dinner with my coworker. _

But then he thinks of Harry, he thinks of clouds, he thinks of his own feet dancing in the air. Louis’ brain had been pretty full-up occupied with THERE IS AN ALIEN ON PLANET EARTH but there was some small part of him from childhood that had been thinking, _ now I know what it’s like to fly. _

_ Dessert, after dinner, tonight, I’ll text you, _Louis taps firmly as he steps into the Daily Planet. 

“LOUIS," Perry barks from the conference room. Louis turns and catches sight of the panoramic video screens. He sees a spiffy small figure plummeting off the roof of a very tall building. It looks even worse than it felt. "IS THAT YOU?" 

"Oh, _ mother _ of pigeons," Louis says.   
  


***

_   
What should I wear for the most important interview of my career, the Pulitzer one, the one that will put me on the cover of Time for First Contact? _Louis texts to Zayn. 

Then he opens WhatsApp, Niall being more reliable on international platforms, and texts, _ What should I wear for a date that isn’t a date but I want someone to maybe think of me as dateable? _

Louis looks out the window. There’s nothing in the sky, just blue. He glances at the stovetop, upon which a pot of pasta is boiling. Antonio had long ago convinced Louis that when in doubt, one could prepare a relatively impressive simple dinner from the fresh pasta at the Italian shop halfway down Broad street, and Louis was of the opinion that if Harry the Helpful Alien wanted to complain about Louis’ mother’s own sauce recipe, Harry the Helpful Alien could just fly on home. 

_ I think THE S GUY will be on the cover of time as soon as somebody gets a good actual photograph of him, or a particularly good sketch from Ni, _ Zayn texts back, as unhelpful as ever. _ And f you he better be on the cover of the Planet first _

_ Obvi, _ Louis responds. _ WHAT TO WEAR Z _

_ A flight suit? _ Zayn texts. _ How did it go at LexCorp? _

Louis scoffs and adds a careful amount of pepper to the sauce. 

_ Fantastico, _ Louis writes quickly, scanning for the basil. _ Multo bene! Benissimo! Incredibile! _

_ Antonio lessons getting far with you huh, _Zayn texts. 

Louis is pretty sure he’s got post-flight nausea and post-I-almost-died mania, and he should clean his apartment and maybe text Marcel and maybe do his taxes and maybe also stay up all night and plot Lex Luthor’s demise. He itches for the papers that are hopefully in Marcel’s possession. He flips back over to WhatsApp. 

_ Are you having sex on your not-date, _Niall had written. 

_ Always a very disappointing lack of poetry with you, _ Louis texts back. Niall sends a gif of a dog eating an eggplant, which Louis stares at for five seconds before deciding that in his professional opinion it has no communicative value of any kind. 

_ You’re not hearing me, it’s not a date I just want to look dateable in the abstract, _Louis texts back. Niall sends a fire emoji, and a garbage can emoji. 

Louis tastes the sauce, considers the copious garlic already added, shrugs, and adds more. 

_ I cannot believe that you texted my CHARLATAN of a roommate about your date and asked me about BUSINESS, _comes a text from Zayn. Louis sighs, and flips over to the Investigative Group Chat, because honestly why does he ever bother?

Niall has sent ten emojis with halos. _ I have excellent taste, _Zayn responds.

_ You’re well known terrible at dressing, comes with the territory of being so beaut nobody cares, _ Louis types. _ I needed design input _

_ I take offense. _ Zayn writes. _ Are you having sex on the date?? Or are you being uncharacteristically shy with this one _

_ NIALL, _Louis types. He loves his horrible monster friends. He really, really does.

_ Your blue one with the collar, _ Niall says. _ Pop of color, doesn’t look like you tried, secretly fits real nice. _

_ tx _ , _ ilu, _ Louis types. 

_ I know. You gonna get yourself on the cover of the Daily Planet? _ Niall writes, _ what’s the luck with the L word, or the S word? OR THE M WORD _

_ RECORD UR INTERVIEW, _Zayn writes, and then he copy-pastes it into the screen so many times that the chat app freezes. 

Louis throws two bonus cloves of garlic in the sauce, garlic being the panacea of planet Earth, and shoots off an email to _ zmalice _ and _ ni _ @dailypla.net: _ serves u right _  


***  


Harry the Alien is actually, really, truly a superhero. Louis sits across from him at a rooftop table and falls into a world of far-away suns, and bold scientists, and dazzling empires too conceited to listen to reason. It’s fantastical and insane and Louis is glad he has three recorders going (plus a secret one strapped to the bottom of the table just in case) because he can’t even keep track over his own astonishment. 

Yet he knows, instinctively, it’s a true story_. _It’s in the way that Harry talks with his hands, the steady but narrowed tone of his voice that shows this story is hard for him to tell anyone. It’s in the details about the kind parents with the broken tractor and how Harry smiles when he talks about his adopted mother's rules that kept him from playing football. 

“I didn’t know,” Harry says, matter-of-factly, when Louis asks him about his earliest memories and whether superpowered babies blasted through their cribs or tore cookie jars apart. “My powers were latent until I really knew about them. My parents always told me I was adopted, and they always told me it was a complicated story that they were going to tell me when I was ready. And they told me...that they believed I could be anything.” 

“So they lied,” Louis says, provocatively, just enough humor in his voice to make sure it’s not offensive, but probing enough that it might startle out a reaction. He’s Investigative, after all. He isn’t sure whether Alien Psychology is the same as human but Harry certainly has the same facial expressions as any human Louis has ever interviewed--if significantly more handsome. Louis shakes his head at himself, minutely. 

Harry makes a face around a gigantic bite of pasta. Louis smiles at him. “I wouldn't say that, not at all,” Harry says carefully. “I think they told the story that made sense to a five-year-old, given the context.” 

“You were supercharged by solar power and you could jump over thirty feet by the time you were ten,” Louis points out. And Harry has the power to shovel immense amounts of pasta in his face, but Louis keeps that one to himself.

“Somehow it was easy to just believe I was...weird.” If a preternaturally handsome supreme being could look just a little bit dopey, Harry did. For a quick guilty second Louis was reminded of Marcel, leaning over the table at the Daily Planet taking notes and looking like someone who had definitely _ never _been cool in high school. He brushed the thought away with a whirl of sauce.

“Are _ you _ lying about anything?” Louis asks. “Wanting to help humans, for instance?”   
  
Harry turns an interesting shade of pink, and he frowns. “I’m here to help, I think it’s my responsibility to help, given that on this planet, I have these powers.” he repeats, calmly. It’s the twentieth iteration of the _ do you come in peace _question and Louis has about thirty more up his sleeve. He grins at Harry. 

“So tell me about these powers.”

Superstrength, superheating, super sight, x-ray vision, laser vision. He’s just one person but he’s going to change everything. Louis’ mind spins out on the ramifications, military and defense and spy, medical and scientific. “Bulletproof, so far,” Harry adds with a self-deprecating shrug. 

“Do you get sick?” Louis asks curiously. 

“Not yet,” Harry says, and Louis makes a note for a future question about vulnerabilities but he knows that it’s a delicate balance, getting interviewees to admit to any. Harry flashes a smile, utterly charming, over the pasta. “Kryptonian culture was very political, I’ve learned from the….uh, let’s say the _ tapes _that my dad sent with me. My adopted parents are very honest. It’s a complicated world, and I’m trying to figure out...both sides.” 

“Beginning to get why you’re starting in Metropolis,” Louis says, “Epicenter of disaster. City of contradictions. Nothing the same every day.” 

"You're never boring," Harry says, warm eyes despite their uncanny hue and a little _ too _ knowing, and Louis suddenly needs to inspect the parmesan very closely, a happy kind of flush running through him. He doesn't know Harry, not really, shouldn't trust him, nobody on Earth should trust anything about this. And Louis cannot possibly be _flirting _on top of it. It's too much to believe, it's gotta have a catch, it's like a fairy tale, _ and yet. _

"It's a crazy city," Louis says. 

“It’s a good city,” Harry answers with a passion that warms Louis’ heart, much as he tries to tamp it down under the cover of journalistic blanket suspicion. 

“_Can _ you tell lies?” Louis asks, and a distant look passes over Harry’s face.

“Yes,” he says. 

Louis points a fork at him. “Is _ that _a lie? What if you can only tell lies about telling lies, or, or, ”

“Is this a philosophy test?” Harry asks. He wrinkles his nose. It’s stupidly cute and for a second, it feels familiar but Louis can’t tell why. “Today I rescued you, I shored up a wind warm off the coast, I worked on talking to whales--” 

“Hold up,” Louis interrupts. 

“--whales,” Harry repeats innocently, “I’m working on whale songs, it’s hard, Kryptonians don’t have the right vocal chords, but I try to practice at least ten minutes every day.”

“Whales,” Louis repeats flatly. 

“I planted three hundred trees that were lined up for human labor in South America, I stopped thirty bank robberies--did you know that people still rob _ banks? _I really thought that was just a thing in the movies.”

Harry pauses, just enough of a quirk in his mouth that Louis realizes he’s being astonished by someone who might know exactly what they’re doing, and yet. _ Whales. _ Louis thinks it’s possible that if he saw Harry on the street, out of this absurd garb and without the wind whipping through his mop of hair, he might imagine that he was merely a ridiculously good-looking human. But now, it’s impossible to think that he’s human. His eyes are otherworldly, lit from within, intense in a way that makes Louis absolutely believe that Harry could X-Ray through Louis’ skull if he tried.

“I know it’s a lot. It’s a lot for me. I’m still learning. But helping planet Earth is my purpose,” Harry says, “Do you believe me yet?” 

“You don’t think you’re here to hurt us, I believe that,” Louis says, tapping his fork into the pasta. He’d made pasta because he’d been certain of his ability to make it. Harry jumped off rooftops and knew he could fly. His phone buzzes in his pocket, and Louis checks it subtly. It's the alarm. God _ damn, _he’s got to go find Marcel. 

“Well this is truly a strange thing to say to _ you, _but, we’re gonna have to wrap this up since I have another story,” Louis says, “The, uh,” 

“LexCorp,” Harry says, sounding a little weary. “Louis. I really don’t think it’s a good--” 

“None of that,” Louis scowls. “I get your whole--” he waves a fork, splattering a bit of pasta sauce on his cheek, and wiping it off quickly. Harry looks like he’s holding back another smile. Louis scowls deeper. “--Your whole heroism thing, but I’m wrapping this thing up. Just, just give me the one day. Thanks for the backup today, but we’ve nearly got Luthor.” 

“Well I’ll be watching for LexCorp at your apartment tonight, you don’t need to worry,” Harry says firmly. 

"Really?" Louis asks, who hadn't been exactly worried but on the other hand wasn't about to forget the rushing sensation of being thrown off a building, and had been thinking about going over to Zayn and Niall's shared apartment for the night, just in case. That plan melts away at Harry's resolute nod and the blazing sensation of his attention.

"I'm a superpowered alien who doesn't need to sleep and can hear in frequencies your planet hasn't even discovered," Harry says, implacably. "I should've been there faster at the rooftop but you can rest assured, Luthor isn't getting away with anything anymore." 

"God," Louis says, mostly to himself. The edge of adrenaline he'd been carrying since the beginning of the investigation into LexCorp suddenly doesn't know what to do with itself. Louis shakes his head. Superhuman aliens really did change everything. When the world really woke up to that….

"I want to bring him down," Louis says, "That's important. I know maybe it doesn't make sense to you. I know maybe it’s small, compared to everything that you’re doing. But Southside--"

"It makes sense to me," Harry says. He looks down, and then up again. “I want you to--I know that you want to help people, too. Nothing about it is small. I don’t want you to publish this interview until _ after _we--after you break the story on LexCorp.” 

Louis doesn’t even know what to say--it sends a flood of warmth down his spine and gives him butterflies. It’s _ absurd. _  


***  


At McEwan’s Ice Cream Parlor Louis orders the triple-topping version of the fluorescent candy-floss-blue birthday cake ice cream sundae because A) he nearly plummeted to his death and he _deserves _it B) McEwan’s sundaes are designed for at least two people and Louis usually never has someone to actually shoulder half the blame for one of them at the tail-end of an insane investigative day. But tonight he has Marcel. 

He makes sure to get Marcel a vibrantly pink spoon, and Marcel grins at him. 

_ I had a date with an actual alien, _ Louis reminds himself ferociously. It is therefore contextually _ stupid _that one grin from a Smallville-derived, dorky cutie like Marcel Kent should make Louis feel like he’s all thumbs, about to drop his own spoon into the cracked red pleather seating of McEwan’s syrup-stained booths. 

Life. What a ride. 

“Go on,” Louis says, gesturing. “While I was giving a much needed shit-talking to one Lex Luthor, what did we get? Give me the scoop.” 

Marcel rolls his eyes over the heaping whipped cream at the joke. The effect is softened by the sprinkles he accidentally spills on his tie. 

"Wow," Louis says, giving himself brainfreeze and a sugar rush in impressive time, "You're losing your mild-mannered baby charm. How quickly Metropolis works its decay." 

"I'm _ fully _grown," Marcel protests faintly through whipped cream, but Louis thinks he can see a pleased aura at the teasing anyway.

On Niall’s expert advice Louis is wearing his soft, dark blue button-up that he bought for a long-ago Daily Planet fundraiser. It has tiny shooting stars all over it, and Niall had sent him five thumbs-up emojis in response to his pre-evening selfie, but Louis still has a vague feeling that he looks at least a little bit like someone who’s fallen off a building. 

Marcel has actually dressed up _more_ for their post-rescue, post-adventure debrief session, like he’s anxious to make up for something. His tie has small bouquets of wheat on it. His glasses are truly enormous. 

“I shouldn't have left you there," Marcel says, hesitatingly like it's not quite right but he doesn't have the words, "I--"

“None of that," Louis blusters. "While I was, uh, _ fine, _ and you were saving our story and our hard-won evidence and not getting caught, which you absolutely should've done, _ ” _Louis says, because Marcel is starting to look a little guilty on the edges like he’s about to open this ice cream session with another apology for abandoning Louis to the mercies of LexCorp—“What did we end up getting from them?” 

“Something real,” Marcel says, and he spreads out the papers on the table. 

It takes thirty-five minutes and a refill on cherries for both of them, and then a side cup of root beer because Marcel mentions something about not understanding the point of root beer floats and Louis cannot let that go. But ultimately, they stare at the papers, shuffling them around and pointing out the bits in order, long enough to interpret it. Marcel reads faster than anyone Louis has ever met, so it’s only five cherries and another root beer deep when he says, “This is it. I think we’ve got it.” 

Louis knows Southside from street level, and Marcel knows it from above, but until they start looking at the reams and reams of documents, neither of them had known Southside from _ below. _

“It’s plans, it’s mining plans,” Louis says at last, pushing over a heap of whipped cream in Marcel’s direction. The small but always-on _ boy _part of Louis’ brain had noted the way that Marcel eyed the whipped cream like a diminishing resource. 

Marcel nods. He taps the plans, dates and engineering specs and memos all lined up in a neat pile next to McEwan’s napkins. LexCorp was going to destroy Southside, but not for what Louis had suspected--luxury condos and renovations. It’s for something much deeper, literally. The papers are maps of the underground. Marcel had overlaid a topological map and put down a paper listing contractors, under the table money, plus a detailed quiet memo chain that hinted very strongly that the entire zoning office of Metropolis was staffed with Lex Luthor’s personal picks. 

“They’re demolishing the neighborhood because they want something that’s underneath it. Southside is on top of some kind of mineral vein,” Marcel says, “That’s what I looked up this afternoon. I don’t --” He looks troubled, an obscure and distant kind of troubled, and stares into the whipped cream and then back at the blueprints. “Actually that’s not quite it.” 

Marcel looks up at Louis with a determined expression. Louis has the sudden urge to take off his glasses, to see what he can feel would be a commensurate brightness in his eyes if the glasses weren’t smudged and reflecting the ice cream shop lights and casting thick rim shadows on the shape of his eye sockets. 

“It was a meteor crash, decades ago. A few decades ago. I cross-referenced in with a database from the Kansas University astrophysics department.”

“A _ meteor,” _Louis starts, but Marcel continues in a slightly desperate rush.

“A meteor from outerspace,” he says firmly, “From...from very far. I can’t get all of the details, but a sampling from the other side of the planet--”

“The other side of the _ planet,” _Louis says, because that’s not how meteor work, is it? A meteor that big, he would’ve known about it.

Marcel nods. “Ok, more like a meteor storm, many of them.” And that, Louis thinks he might remember hearing about from childhood, although he barely paid attention to things he couldn’t see past the skyline of Metropolis sometimes. 

“But some of it went down in Southside. The fires, the big fires that they built the projects up around, you would’ve been a little kid, a toddler at the time. But I think it must have been the meteor storm, some debris from it buried in the earth and then built up around. And several years ago, somebody ran some tests.” 

“Somebody,” Louis nods toward one of the memos in the file, a LexCorp scientist embedded in a military intelligence unit on the other side of the world. _ God, _but this planet was a complicated one, its complexity extending even over the bits that came in from other worlds.

“Those tests indicated that the other meteor material held promise of some kind of super energy-dense reaction,” Marcel says. He swallows. “Something valuable.”

“Something unique,” Louis says, a pit in his stomach growing deeper. Only so many world-changing things could fall from the sky at the same time, right? He thinks about Harry and Harry’s big sincere eyes and the _ story, _ the story that Louis _ wanted to hear _ about heroism and bravery and saving things, and he doesn’t know _ what _to think. 

“That meteor must be what Lex Luthor wants.” 

Louis looks at the plans. He needs a plan of his own, and it needs to contain only the elements that _he _knows how to control, and none of those elements fly around the tops of skyscrapers with a gigantic cape. Louis makes a decision, and doesn't glance out the windows toward the darkening sky. “Ok,” he says, slowly and then speeding up with determination. “Ok, we can run with this. I think...it’s not, you know, secret alien strippers--”

“_ What,” _squawks Marcel. 

“I just mean it’s not instant virality like, _ ugh, _ like _ flying,” _ Louis says, and Marcel chokes a little bit on his spoon. Louis pounds him on the back because Louis is a good person. Prairie Boy is again, he notices, more muscular than he appears on the outside. “But it’s enough. I’ll take this home and write it up and by this time tomorrow it’ll be splashed up everywhere, _ Lex Luthor Destroys Metropolis to Steal Meteor, _something like that.” 

“Louis. It’s still dangerous,” Marcel says. “Are you sure we should push forward with this story? Should we...” 

Louis grips his plastic spoon tighter than it deserves. “What’s the point,” he says, “What’s the point of us, if not exactly this?” 

“I know it’s just. It’s Lex Luthor,” Marcel says. He looks down at the tabletop. “He was threatening you.” 

"Lex Luthor tried to get the student newspaper cut at our high school," Louis says. He thinks about being brave, he thinks about the stifling feeling of being a scholarship kid surrounded by people who did stuff like that _ just for fun, _he thinks about how you can’t spend all your time looking up at the sky and waiting for something good to drop out of it. Something bad could drop out of it. 

“People like that deserve to get taken down. Tomorrow, we take all of this crap to Perry. Tonight we write up the piece, and we expose it all. Maybe Lex Luthor paid off everyone in city hall but he can’t go back in time and undo the Daily Planet morning edition once it’s in print. What’s the worst he could do?” 

“Ok," Marcel says, Midwestern promise in it, and Louis thinks that at least he can trust Marcel, Smallville sincere straight through to the core of his big, believe-the-best heart. "Ok. Just don't rush ahead and do anything reckless without me. We’re supposed to be partners on this one, right?”

Louis looks across the devastated carcasses of high sugar desserts at Marcel, whose feet are firmly on the ground. 

“Okay,” he says, “I won’t.”


	3. IN WHICH OUR HEROES CONFRONT ALL NEFARIOUS PLOTS NOT EXCLUDING EACH OTHER

The worst Lex Luthor can do, it turns out, is very bad indeed. 

Louis walks into the Daily Planet at eight the next morning with two Antonio coffees for himself and a hot chocolate for Marcel balanced dangerously in his two hands, and under his arm there is a rough draft of an excoriating story with only _ten_ supplemental pages of blueprints and references and even room left for Marcel's second pass of allegedly brilliant prose. Perry should be so proud. Louis is looking forward to seeing Marcel's stupid tie choice today. He's looking forward to bringing down LexCorp. He's looking forward to dumping the tapes of HARRY THE SUPER MAN (hastily scrawled in marker on the cases and stained slightly with ice cream) on Perry's desk.

Most of all, he's looking forward to busing out to Southside tonight to give Rodrigo's grandmother a hug and get his ass handed to him in a celebratory pickup game.

Louis stops when he sees every single editor in the middle of the main room, standing together like they’d all just walked in and not bothered to go sit down. 

Well, almost every editor. 

“What’s going on,” Louis asks. Only Gloriana looks over, everyone else seemingly frozen in place. 

Daily Planeteers are never frozen in _ silence. _Louis feels the bottom drop out of his stomach before anybody even responds. 

“Zayn and Niall are. Gone,” Gloriana says at last, helplessly. Perry is in his office on the phone with the door closed and Louis notes, distantly, that he’s yelling. “And Louis, you...you’re grounded. We’re not running anything today. We've shut down. We don’t know which--you should probably just go home.” 

“What, what do you mean,” Louis manages, but there’s it’s difficult over the klaxon in his brain that sounds like _ your fault. _

Gloriana gestures toward the desks, and there, hung from the ceiling over the small cluster that is their Investigative team corner, is a long paper sign with jagged letters in dripping, red paint. Something made to look terrifying, to feel like the threat that it was. 

_ EITHER THE STORY DIES _

_ OR THEY DO _

Louis stares at it. His head is nothing but white noise. It scrambles somehow through the last text, the last time he heard from them--but he already knows it’s true. Zayn and Niall are gone. No, they’ve been _ taken. _

His pocket buzzes. Louis jumps. He flicks it open in some mad, panicked hope that it could be the Investigative Group chat--

It’s an icon Louis has never seen before. It flashes an evil red in a square box on the homescreen of his phone, and it reads _ LC. _

Louis excuses himself blindly and makes it to the bathroom before the mysterious app opens itself, the editors all too shellshocked and dismayed to pay much attention, probably thinking that Louis just needs to go throw up. Which, well, is not wrong. Louis leans against the tile and his phone buzzes again. 

A tiny figure of _ Lex Luthor _leaps out in a projected blue light from Louis’ phone. It’s fuzzy and striated with glitchy little bands of signal junk but it’s definitely Lex Luthor. Louis barely manages to keep from dropping it. 

The holographic Lex spreads his hands. He looks _ chuffed. _

“Ah, Louis Tomlinson,” Lex Luthor purrs through the phone speakers, slightly compressed. “I trust you have received my message.” 

“You _ sick, maniacal--” _Louis bites out but the figure continues speaking. It’s clearly a recording. 

“Now I know you must have left our last encounter thinking so very well of yourself, with all your friends in high places, but not all our friends are so invincible, _ are they.” _The tiny Lex smiles. It somehow manages to be a disturbing rictus even in miniature. “I have taken the liberty of indulging in some more journalist companionship, since you seemed so determined to bring the Daily Planet to my offices.” 

“What do you want,” Louis hisses, uselessly. But of course Lex Luthor is all about _ Lex Luthor, _so he tells him as if he’s answering. 

“I find this whole affair distasteful,” Lex Luthor continues on, looking at his tiny holographic fingernails and gleaming with an absurd sincerity, “But a man must do what he must do to protect his enterprise. I’ll admit I felt a certain amount of understanding for you, Louis Tomlinson. I know what it is to feel so committed to seeing something through. But I hope I’ve changed the game for you a little.” 

Louis grips his phone so hard he’s in danger of cracking the screen. He forces himself to breathe. 

The tiny Lex projection smiles again, broader. “Come to my office, and bring those documents you stole. Every single one, and every single backup recording you've made of them. And I mean that--I would hate to deprive Metropolis of its very best street coffee. And if you tell anyone, especially _ your flying friend, _then he'll be the only friend you have left."

***

Louis gets down to the lobby floor in a haze. His head is a pounding mess of fear and adrenaline. His hands are shaking, his vision’s blurry on the edges, like he’s falling off another building, like all of the ground underneath the city has gone liquid and unstable. 

_ Niall and Zayn, _taken by Lex Luthor and god only knows what he’s doing to them--Louis jumps when his phone buzzes. 

_ Where are you? _It's from Marcel. Of course it’s from Marcel. 

Louis’ heart drops even further, and he hadn’t thought that was possible. He swears under his breath. Marcel, with all of his cornfed sincerity and sweet resolution, does _ not _ belong anywhere near this. If Louis can’t keep Zayn and Niall out of harm’s way he sure as hell shouldn’t throw Marcel in with them. Louis feels his hands shake even more. Everything is a toxic swirl of Louis’ own stupidity. He’d blindly chased a story and pretended like _ everyone _was bulletproof. But no one is really a superhuman, least of all Louis. 

Some instinct makes Louis look up from his phone, and he sees Marcel across the lobby, frowning at his phone. He can’t have gone up to the Daily Planet floor yet, so he doesn't know. Louis curses under his breath and backtracks to the dismal corner coffee cart and hides behind a palm. 

_ Have you got the draft? _ Marcel texts, and Louis can nearly hear the innocent excitement in it. Across the lobby, it almost looks like he’s smiling. _ Ready to get some line edits that’ll actually make Perry’s blood pressure go *down*? _

He can't tell Marcel. He can't put somebody else in danger. He's on his own. His mind is racing. The sign was a message, a trap, a lure--_ come and find me, _ a message from Lex Luthor to Louis specifically. They hadn’t come after him because they hadn’t needed to. God, Louis is so _ stupid. _

"Hey, Louis," someone says from the side, touching Louis’ arm with a firm hand.

Louis whirls, heart racing. Of all people it's Liam the security guard, out of uniform in old jeans and a plain t-shirt and looking as guilty and wan as Louis feels. He’s got Louis' arm in a gentle grip, and it gives Louis a horrible flashback to the previous day. 

"What are you doing here?" Louis hisses. He tugs his arm free viciously. "Capturing my friends not enough for you? Here to drag me back to Lex?"

Liam looks pale around the edges but resolute. Across the lobby, Marcel has stiffened, looking into space in an odd way. Louis blinks and looks back at Liam.

"I quit," Liam says, "Right after… Look, I had no idea. I had no idea what Luthor was capable of. I quit as soon as he did that. I mean, I’m pretty sure he would’ve fired me. I’m so sorry I was any part of threatening. I had to come and tell you, I had no idea. Your friends are gone?"

“LexCorp fucking _ kidnapped _ them,” Louis says, blankly. He feels sour fear in the back of his throat. Nothing about this is fun or exciting anymore, everything a spiraling panic. 

“Damnit,” Liam swears, “I promise, I had no idea. You must have really found something big. I had no idea he would do this.” 

"Probably shouldn't have worked for a psycho," Louis says bitterly. His mind is still racing. Luthor is holding all the cards, and he knows it. 

"Every CEO is a psycho," Liam says with a certain weariness, "I'm just security, ok? I had a contract and then there was a transfer available to a full-time role internally and I _ didn't know, _all right? All I ever did was guard warehouses full of electronics and try to do my job right. I didn't know anything about what was happening at LexCorp. I quit right there on the roof and I was so relieved to see the--the--the Metropolis flying man, so I knew you were ok and--" 

"Well bully for you," Louis says, sharp and tight and ferocious because _ Zayn and Niall are out there, captured, scared, in danger, _and it's his fucking fault and he doesn't have the patience for some stranger's coming of age story, or flying men who aren’t anywhere around to help now, and he doesn’t know who to trust. “Get lost. Fuck off. I’ve got something to do.”

“You’re going to LexCorp, aren’t you,” Liam says, sounding certain. Louis risks a glance back across the lobby. Marcel is still standing there. He’s staring down at his phone, but there’s a tight expression on his face and a tense, waiting look to the shape of his muscles underneath his dorky blue blazer. His tie, today, is bright red. Maybe he’s worried that Louis hasn’t responded yet. 

“Leave me alone, I’m doing this alone,” Louis says. 

“It’s a trap,” Liam says, “You know it’s a trap, right?” 

Louis explodes, wrath and frustration in equal measure. “I know it’s a trap! What _ else would it be. _He sent me a goddamn holographic message tied up in a bow!” 

“Sounds like Lex,” Liam says, sadly. Louis stares at him. It’s all just so ridiculous.

“I’m going.” Louis tugs away, meaning to make it for the side door on the other side of the corner from where Marcel could possibly see. Liam lets him go immediately, but he doesn’t leave. A look passes over his face, solid and determined. 

"I'm here to help," Liam says. "I can break you into LexCorp. I know where he’s holding your friends. I know the building, I know the exits, I can help."

Louis wheels back. His heart pounds in his ears. He considers the possibility that this too is a trap, the extremely unjust odds that Lex Luthor has the power and influence and money to persuade anybody to do his bidding. 

"A lot of people have been trying to help lately," Louis says. He thinks of Harry who with all of his superpowers seems useless and unreachable now, some effigy floating high above Metropolis who didn’t keep this from happening either. He thinks of meteors from outer space, corporations with arms that wrap around the globe. He thinks about the Daily Planet press, frozen, all of the editors all so vulnerable upstairs with their stupid conference table and the way that they couldn’t even afford _ better flourescent lights _ or a company holiday party last year. And mostly, he thinks with an incandescent rage at himself, so wrapped up in his own investigative story that he hadn't even considered telling Harry to protect everybody else last night. He'd been so _ stupid. _

“Please, let me help fix this,” Liam says. There’s something in his face that’s akin to Marcel, something true, and real. Louis feels a little bit like the world is slipping away. _ Trust, _ Harry had said, _ I trust humans. _

“Ok. Let’s bring Lex Luthor down,” Louis says, human to the core. 

_ Home for the day, not really up for talking, _ Louis texts Marcel, and ignores the twinge of sad guilt that skips through him. 

***

Up thirty stories via a painfully old maintenance elevator, keyed in with Liam’s security passcode, Louis has time to learn that Liam works out for two hours every day and wants to build an urban beehive, but hasn’t yet found an apartment building in the city that will let him. 

“You wouldn’t possibly have lasted working for Lex, nobody who worries about things like colony collapse could last at LexCorp,” Louis says, eyes glued to the elevator number as it climbs upward far too slowly. 

“Not anymore,” Liam says, a tinge of desperate _ can’t believe we’re doing this _in his voice. Louis pats him on the arm reassuringly. 

“If Lex throws me off this building, tell Perry I said you should work night shift at the Planet.” 

“That’s not going to happen,” Liam says, pale-faced. 

“You’re right, night shift is the worst, make him put you on morning, really we need an actual security team, this kidnapping and my death will make an excellent pitch for that,” Louis says, joking as a survival mechanism under peril being the finest honed tool in his toolbox. The door opens, he bolts for the hallway, and he runs straight into a painfully solid mass of--

“MarCEL?!” Louis yelps. It's truly him, Louis is truly being held by the elbows by nearly six feet of Multigrain-raised Heartland-incubated newbie reporter, which is frowning at him so disappointed that it shims clear through Louis’ brain and drops all the way down to his toes. Louis is just disoriented enough to gape at Marcel, adrenaline and stress and disbelief briefly taking his words.

“You left without me,” Marcel says, accusing and poignant. “You _ don’t _ trust me. Why are you threatening _ death?” _ And that feels just _ terrible, _a cold ice dump over Louis’ head on top of the stewing guilt and panic over Niall and Zayn. 

“You heard that?” Louis says blankly, “Through the elevator door?” Marcel shakes him just a little bit. His glasses are even more smudged than normal. 

“How the fuck did you even get up here,” Liam marvels. Marcel glances briefly toward an open window but they're thirty stories up the top of LexCorp tower, so that's silly.

“What happened to us being partners?” Marcel asks. 

Louis clutches Marcel back, dimly noticing the _ absurd _ quality of his biceps. Seriously, was it the milk? “I’m sorry, I _ know, _I just--I was trying to protect you--” 

“We were supposed to finish this story together, we were supposed to be _ co-leads _,” Marcel says stubbornly. 

“Well some stories just require being alone,” Louis says, and yet he’s so glad, he’s so relieved he can’t even put any convincingness behind it. With Marcel’s big hands still braced around his elbows and Liam behind him, it feels like a _ team, _like he’s not alone, walking toward danger right in the cheap cubicle-office-flavored heart of LexCorp but ready for anything. He’s so touched that he could tear up about it, but he blinks resolutely against the bad fluorescent lighting and the reflection of the Metropolis skyline in Marcel’s glasses. 

“What am I,” Liam mutters in the background, “Chopped liver?”

“I wasn’t going to _ let _ you go alone,” Marcel says stubbornly. His tie is a bright red that’s altogether too bright, and it smells like laundry detergent, and Louis can see the strands of hair fighting their way free from gel over his forehead. Louis glares at Marcel to keep from having goddamn horrible emotions like _ relief _ and _ trust_, and Marcel glares back, stubbornness and Justice written all over his face. 

“Well then let’s go get ‘em, partner, if you’re sure you want to be here,” Louis says. 

“I wanted to finish this story as Marcel, for once, just this one thing,” Marcel says, which hardly makes any sense at all and Louis just stares at him confused, but there’s no time at all because behind them come footsteps that somehow _ sound _rich. 

“Oh how charming. You brought friends,” Lex Luthor says, brandishing a gun. 

*** 

Lex Luthor has had Zayn and Niall tied to the pillar in the middle of the massive top floor office of LexCorp tower, a red-carpeted room with a staggeringly high ceiling and a rounded panorama window on the city. 

There's also a missile, thirty feet long and silver, mounted in the center of the room and looking very operational. An ominous red light pulses on some kind of control box at the base, fucking of course, Louis thinks, Bad Guy engineers couldn’t have designed a gentle _ blue _ with a nice big _ safety _on it. 

The window is open, the missile lined up to the horizon. 

"You know, that would be a phallic living room decoration even for _ me _," Louis notes. 

“Shut up,” Lex snarls. He waves the gun, more show than force, but it’s still deadly enough for them all to flinch. Everyone except Marcel, Louis notices, who seems to have an irate expression on his face that’s out of proportion with the situation. 

Louis prays that Marcel won’t be an idiot, and for good measure, he hisses “_ Don’t be an idiot.” _

Marcel glances at Louis, and at the gun, and makes a face that Louis cannot for the life of him interpret, probably some kind of Farmlands heroism baking underneath all that hair. Thankfully, Lex is already monologuing. 

“--your pitiful paper,” he’s proclaiming when Louis tunes back in. Lex has marched them to the pillar and lines them up next to it with an impatient wave of his gun. Marcel is so tense that Louis can feel him about to spring. “As if anyone would care for that disgusting neighborhood across the bridge! As if you could outwit me, _ me?” _It’s clearly going to take a while for Lex to get it all out of his system.

“_ Guys,” _Louis breathes, scanning the missing members of the Daily Planet Investigative team out of the corner of his eye. Niall and Zayn grimace through gags. They’re both in pajamas, Niall’s a perfectly respectable pair of red boxers and a white t-shirt, Zayn’s a dubious fuzzy blue pajama set with embroidered flowers. They look ok, frazzled and angry and likely in need of a good coffee, but ok. Louis’ heart finds a pattern again. 

“--and when I’m through, no one ever will!” Lex finishes grandly. 

“Was that it? Did you get it all out?” Louis asks, after a beat. Lex glares at them over the barrel of his gun. Marcel quivers just a little, leaning forward, and Liam puts a hand on Marcel’s arm, bless him. Marcel leans a little bit to the side, breathing heavy. Louis spares a thought to worry about it, but maybe Marcel is winded from running up the stairs. 

Louis steps forward and crosses his arms over his chest. 

“I said was that it?” he asks. Lex snarls, upper lip sliding over an intensely perfect line of teeth that are probably veneers. Louis goddamn _ hates _rich people. 

“For you,” Lex says sourly, eyes flickering around them, looking for the fear he’s undoubtedly expecting. 

Louis lifts his chin and holds up the bag that he’s been carrying at his side, heavy with the stolen papers. 

“Your plans,” Louis says, slowly and clearly, “I have them all here, your evil plan to evict hundreds of innocent Metropolis citizens just so you could mine for useless meteor. You must have been at least a little concerned about Metropolis getting wind of this, if you needed them back.”

“You can’t stop me,” Lex says, injecting it with even more venom than before, “But I prefer to not expend resources.” 

“All this for a rock,” Louis says, shaking his head. 

“You’re pathetically short-sighted,” Lex spits, and Louis keeps his face extremely blank, holding back the euphoric investigative grin that always threatens him at moments like this. He’s got Lex on the hook, so he reels him in. 

“So tell me,” Louis says, “Tell me and my friends why this is so much more important than the lives of innocent people and their property. Better yet, tell us how you only know about the meteor because _ your dad _ covered up the devastation when it hit, and Southside had to build around it!” 

“Southside,” Lex says hatefully, “Has been a thorn in LexCorp long enough. We held the lease as a courtesy to the city--”

“LexCorp barred aid after the meteor, and now you want the stupid rock itself, admit it!” Louis yells. 

“They didn’t _ deserve _ the resources of Metropolis,” Lex roars. “It was child’s play to take that disaster aid and use it for the company, and who was around to stop us? They’re just like you, small people living small lives, getting in the way of innovation! You and your famous _ ideals, _Louis Tomlinson, are holding the human race back. People like my family, we drive it forward! That’s more than worth the price of a little neighborhood, wouldn’t you say?” 

“That meteor, if it’s coming out at all, if it’s worth anything, belongs to the people of Southside,” Louis says.

“That meteor is _ mine,” _Lex says, leaning forward, coiled like a snake. Liam is tensed to one side of Louis and Marcel to the other. 

Lex keeps the gun angled on them and strides over to an ornate box left on the massive desk overlooking the window. It’s a strange kind of metal, dark and rough, and when he flips the lid and pulls something out, Marcel _ shudders. _

“You ok?” Louis hisses, but Marcel doesn’t respond.

Lex holds up a rock, triumphant and towering and terrible, like a villain on tv. Louis stares at the rock. It’s a dark object, jagged like it’s been cut out of something, thick and glassy-smooth on the other side. It’s streaked with grey but in the middle of the grey is something that catches Louis’ eye and pulls him in. _ Green, _ green like Harry the alien’s eyes, vibrant, pulling, _ strange. _

“This meteor is the most valuable substance on earth,” Lex says, “This sample alone, this tiny piece we found in an excavation under one of the projects, is worth more than half of LexCorp. Which is a very classified secret, but I suppose you can all know, because you won’t be _ around for long _to report on it!” 

“Charming,” Louis sniffs, “Nice paperweight, Lex, looks like a knock-off emerald,” 

“_ Idiot,” _Lex huffs, looking more put-upon by the second. It’s always been a particular talent of Louis’, and he smirks at Lex very deliberately. 

“The meteor absorbs sunlight differently than any material earth has ever known_ ,” _ Lex says. He is, obnoxiously, still a genius. "It might even transmute it to a kind of energy. The applications are endless. It has a chemical structure unlike anything we've ever seen. It’s--it can’t even be from our own galaxy. And I’m the only one who recognized it, and _ I own it, _just like I own Southside, just like I own this fucking city. And you, Louis Tomlinson, you are are nothing but a bothersome speck of garbage on the sidewalk.”

“People don’t get to own neighborhoods,” Louis says, “Neighborhoods own people. You’d know that if you knew anything about Metropolis at all.”

“Idiot,” Lex repeats, confident and triumphant and Louis shrugs. 

Marcel slumps, hitting Louis’ shoulder. Louis staggers, startled. Liam braces him on the other side. Marcel had looked calm and angry before but now is sweating through his shirt collar. He looks bad, pale and maybe a little green, damp under his hair, which isn’t remotely how he usually looks. Louis doesn’t think he’s even seen Marcel _ winded _before. 

“What is happening,” Louis yelps, because this isn’t remotely part of the plan. 

“It’s having an effect on him,” Liam says. 

“I don’t, I don’t know,” Marcel says, looking at his own hands with horror. They’re shaking. He looks up at Louis, fear in his eyes the like of which Louis has never seen. “Louis, the gun--” 

“It’s fine,” Louis says, waving a hand. Marcel narrows his eyes and looks like he’s going to dive in front of them all and tell Louis to _ run _except that he doesn’t have the breath even for that. 

“I’ve ever seen anyone respond to this material before,” Lex says, staring at the green mineral, and then at Marcel. “It emits a frequency that doesn’t seem to impact humans--” 

Marcel looks at the mineral with horror. Louis doesn’t understand any of this and he especially doesn’t understand why Marcel is leaning to the side, none of his Midwestern muscle doing anything to prop him upright. He staggers back against the pillar, breathing in ragged starts and stops, like he’s about to have an asthma attack. 

"It’s hurting him," Louis spits, "_ Do _it," 

“Idiot,” Lex Luthor says for the final time, sneering at them all. “As if I care.” 

“Not you,” Louis says, as Liam surges forward. 

*** 

The trouble with running an automated security force with smart weaponry, Liam had told Louis on the way through the maintenance hallway at the bottom of LexCorp tower, is that programmed weapons that are coded to recognize specific users can be exploited if the user signifiers are reprogrammed. So the gun that Lex kept on his person, for instance, a LexCorp smart-reco close-range handgun, could be reprogrammed to not recognize its owner and refuse to fire on fingerprint command. If, caught up in executing evil plans, you forgot to reset your backdoor permissions or didn’t have a head of security good enough to remember. 

“The head of security here _ sucks,” _Liam says, having wrested Lex Luthor’s useless gun out of his hand and then wrested the hand behind Lex Luthor’s back. Weaponless and held down by Liam, Lex Luthor is reduced to a scowling, horrible human being in an overpriced suit, nothing superhuman about him. “I was angling to replace his job, really.” 

“Besides which,” Louis says, whipping around and fumbling with the gags so at least Niall and Zayn can get some relief, “He has an aunt in Southside.” 

“You owe me twenty,” is the first thing out of Niall’s mouth. Louis could cry with how relieved he is to see them, his horrible wonderful team. 

Zayn rolls his eyes. 

“Stupid of me, I thought Louis would do the smart thing and call the cops,” Zayn says, but he’s smiling at Louis, sagging with relief against the chains. 

“When do I ever do the smart thing,” Louis says in a perfectly normal, not at all shaky voice. 

“Fucking _ never,” _Zayn says. Zayn’s smile looks watery and Louis politely ignores it.

“Are these actual, for real, chains?!” Louis is choking a little bit on his relief and adrenaline, working at the bonds. This is going to be a challenge. The chains wind around the column and their legs, ending in an impenetrable metal lock.

“Dramatico,” Zayn sighs, “Luthor was all _ you’ll rue the day you crossed us! _ And _ the media needs to learn its place!” _

“I’ll get you, I’ll get you all, I’ll take down your whole fucking paper,” Lex splutters from where Liam is now holding him down against the desk. 

“Oh, I think we’ve got quite enough from _ you _ on tape,” Louis says. He can’t resist tapping his thigh, where he’s taped several different recorders, all live-streaming data to a secure cache hidden in Antonio’s cart, and another in Louis’ apartment, and another playing live just for the fun of it on the Daily Planet’s editorial television screen. Lex Luthor wasn’t the only one with a flair for the dramatic. Louis sends his best sharklike journalist smile over his shoulder at Lex. 

“You recorded your interview, just like I taught you,” Zayn sighs. Louis winks at him, pulling at the chains. 

“So much evil behind such an attractive face,” Niall says. 

“Laser vision would come in handy,” Louis hisses under his breath, but there’s nothing but blue sky outside of the window in the corner of his eye. Louis grits his teeth. Some things, you still have to do yourself. 

Behind him, there’s a gasp. Louis spins around-- 

Marcel is on the floor, gasping for air. It’s like a cascading reaction has been set off, changed from bad allergies and now into what was veering dangerously near convulsive shock. 

“Oh _ fuck, _ Marcie!” Louis yells, panic shooting through his veins again. Never a dull moment in this fucking city. Of course _ Marcel _would have some kind of insane allergy to a space rock of all things. Nothing about this story was going to be a break. Louis leaps for the desk and the dratted mineral. “Liam, the stupid rock!” 

Liam grabs the meteor and throws it to Louis. 

“I need it, far away,” Marcel gasps, sweat pouring down his face, shaking in his limbs. 

Louis takes the most valuable mineral on the planet, the once-in-a-lifetime find that Lex Luthor was willing to demolish an entire neighborhood to mine, and he doesn’t even hesitate. He lobs the thing out the open window. Knowing Metropolis, it’ll be plucked off the sidewalk before anyone can go looking for it. 

“Louis,” Zayn and Liam yell at the same time. 

Off-balance and one-handed, Liam has fallen over in the scuffle to get the mineral to Louis, and Lex Luthor leapt out of his hold. Lex lounges across the room and makes it to the missile. He slaps a hand on the control panel. 

“You,” Lex Luthor snarls, “IDIOTS!”

Louis is frozen, the missile tilting on its base, pointed directly at the window, and Louis, and all of the city behind them. They’re all frozen for a very long moment. 

“I told you, LexCorp always _ wins,” _Lex Luthor snarls. He levels the missile straight at Louis, the red light blinking faster, the trigger button right there under his palm. His hand moves.

Louis raises his hands, mind blank, no options, he thinks for a sudden moment about letting himself fall but then--then--there's a city behind him, and this is a fucking _missile _and it's going to hit somewhere--

And then Marcel leaps in front of him with a speed he can't understand and shields Louis entirely. Somehow, impossibly, Marcel is strong again, in front of Louis with his arms spread, staring Lex Luthor down, and staring into the missile like it's a child's toy. 

"Get your ass _back _behind me," Louis yells even though he knows it's futile. 

"I am," Marcel says quietly, calmly, his hair falling over his forehead in a loosening curl and his glasses askew on his nose and his eyes _ are green not hazel _ and he is suddenly something _ absolutely, fathomlessly impossible _ and Louis feels it sparking through every nerve in his body, a fireworks explosion, like the final piece of an investigation coming into focus and revealing the truth--"Bulletproof." 

***

Considering that the Daily Planet is still on lockdown for at least the next twenty-four hours while Perry gets through yelling about the free press to every single federal investigator, several international intelligence organizations, and the Metropolis city councilmembers who descended _ en masse _to the site of the spectacular flying man’s latest victory, Louis finds himself home in a surprisingly short amount of time. 

Lex, he assumes, will have no such luck. Lex Luthor had been unceremoniously bundled into a police car, wincing less under the handcuffs than the watchful glare of Marcel. No, _ god, _ Louis has to keep reminding himself-- _ Harry. _

_ Harry. _

Louis has thrown himself into the office chair in the corner of his living room for a proper deep sulk about it, no comfortable couch for this one. He should be elated that they’ve saved Southside--_ he is! _\-- but he can’t keep running back through it and re-feeling the absolutely incredulous swoop in his stomach. Mar--no, fuck, Harry the alien. He’d been gleaming justice and extraordinary might and a flying surreal hero even in Marcel’s stupid clothes. 

And he’s right outside Louis’ window, hand raised to tap. 

Louis yelps in a tone normally reserved for dogs and infants, and falls out of his chair.

“What exactly,” Louis says icily, once he’s recovered enough to go over and fling the window open, “Do you think you’re doing here?”

Harry looks off into the air. He's back in the blue and red suit, the _ S _shining off his chest like a stupid beacon in the streetlight from the outside. “Well I was going to just wait for you to fall off another building, but I really wanted to talk.” 

“You're unbelievable,” Louis says, stalking back into the apartment because for fuck’s sake, Harry’s an alien with x-ray vision so it’s not like he can keep the guy out of his apartment. He glances back, irritated, to see Harry still hovering precariously at the window looking like nothing so much as an anxious, handsome pigeon. 

“Oh, float in, you’re here aren’t you,” Louis scowls, flings himself back into the office chair, folds his arms, and scowls again. 

“I only wanted to explain,” Harry says softly. He’s floated into the apartment and his hair waves gently over his forehead. He’s like a caricature of an action figure. Louis misses Marcel’s glasses. 

“Nothing to explain, obviously,” Louis says, brittle. With the strange rock’s effects removed, Harry had crumpled the nose of Lex Luthor’s missile in his _ hand _before any of them had even moved. He’d fixed everything, he was impossible, and nonetheless Louis was still reserving the right to be pissed. Louis puts his toes down on the carpet and swivels himself in the chair in an elaborate facsimile of carelessness. 

“All in a week’s mission of saving the planet. Gonna be the most viral story to end viral stories. Glad to have been a side character in the bravado. Unclear why you felt like you had to insert yourself into _ my investigation _to get your hands on LexCorp but I guess it’s handy having someone to--” 

“What?” Harry interrupts him. He’s floated closer on the carpet, cheeks red. “Louis. I didn’t take the job at the Planet for--” 

“The _ job,” _Louis says, clutching his own elbows more tightly. “Come on! Don’t Marcel me! Drop the cover story!” 

Harry frowns at him. He looks anguished and sincere and _ like Marcel _and Louis transfers his glare to the ceiling so as not to see it. 

"Some of us may not have x-ray vision and the ability to swoop in and disarm missiles with our fingernails but we also aren't _ pretend _ journalists. I’m still gonna publish this story, and you'll be in it, after all that's what you wanted, _publicity,"_ Louis says caustically to the damp spot near the ceiling fan that he's been ignoring for several months. The story is going to accomplish everything it should, and it’s going to have Harry on the frontpage, the great big alien reveal that everybody wanted and Southside saved at once. It’s only Louis left here feeling like a fool. 

“Louis. Of course you’re going to write the story. And I _ am _ Marcel,” the impossible alien says. His cape flaps a tiny bit in the breeze from the open window and Louis looks pointedly at it, and then back at Harry. Harry folds his arms and glares back. Well _ that _looks enough like Marcel that Louis can feel some small corner of his mind want to smile. 

“Come on,” Louis says, less certain this time. 

“I'm Harry, and I'm Marcel. My real adopted name is _ Marcel,” _ he says. “Marcel Kent. I really am from Smallville. I fell out of the sky in a spaceship and I grew up on a farm. When I was sixteen I found a crystal and a spaceship in the barn and both of them told me that my name was _ Harry Styles _ . I really am from Kansas. _ And _from Krypton. I was on the school newspaper in high school because I couldn’t be on any sports teams. I really want to be a reporter. I really want to work at the Planet. I haven’t quit the job. I don't want anything like publicity.” A look of extreme stubbornness crosses his face, “I’m still on the Investigative team.” 

“If you think Perry is going to sponsor the kind of interplanatary visa they’ll cook up for _ Harry Styles _ , the Daily Planet can’t even get an HB1,” Louis starts, and then his ramble trails off. He realizes that of course, nobody else even knows. To everyone else it had been _ Harry, _ office clothes notwithstanding, the flying and the hair and the gleaming sunshine, glasses off, which, it was _ insane _ that the presence of _ glasses _could’ve fooled anybody but Louis is not going to examine his own utter idiotic fallibility in that regard. 

Either way, Zayn and Niall and Louis are the only ones who know the truth, and here’s Marcel, drifting like an unhappy mobile in Louis’ apartment, not telling him to keep it a secret, just telling him. 

"Well you still lied to me!" Louis says.

"No, no I didn't," Harry, Marcel, whatever, protests. Louis keeps blinking at him like it's going to explain the pull of impossible muscles and the disorienting foot and a half of air between his _ stupid boots _and the ground. “Well maybe. Well, maybe I kind of misled. You didn’t recognize me! But I wasn’t intending to lie. I just left out certain details." 

"Yeah," Louis snaps, "When people do that I usually know I have a story to investigate." 

"Louis," Harry says, his face soft and sorry, "I didn't really know what to do when you fell off that building and I caught you. I--I don't always understand humans. I don't understand this _ city. _ I came here to fulfill my purpose but it's all been so much more complicated than I imagined. I wanted to get a job as a reporter, _ really, _but I didn’t expect to meet you and I didn’t expect for us to have a story like this and I--”

“Why didn’t you just come to LexCorp as the superhero, fly in through the window,” Louis interrupts, arguing because goddamn it’s a thing to do when everything else feels confused, upside down and floating in the air. He's not unfamiliar with feeling like a fool but he doesn't usually feel _ fooled _ and underneath it all, he's just upset, and underneath that there's a ridiculous rising sensation that's horribly like the _ hope _ that Marcel has been, this whole time, still _ real. _

“Why sneak around with me, why not blast lasers through LexCorp?” 

Maybe-Marcel settles down on the carpet. He walks, tentative and looking like himself, toward Louis. Louis can see the same pull of concern around his eyes as he’d seen at the ice cream parlor, as Marcel wore during morning staff meetings taking diligent notes in absurd notebooks. “Because I _ want to still get to be Marcel,” _he says. “I mean. I think I have a responsibility with these powers, but not everything is about the powers. So I worked it out with my parents, we--we brainstormed this whole secret identity, you know, Ma made my outfit, she sewed this cape, and she said it would distract people and I just--” 

“Oh my god,” Louis says, a bundle of things and some of it still _ disappointed _but some of it the grudging admission that it makes sense, it all makes a lot of sense. “I thought you rode cows into the sunset while you ate barley,” he says, sounding, despite himself, a little bit stupidly hurt. 

“That’s not a thing,” Marcel erupts, forward and in Louis’ space now, so close that Louis can feel the heat off him, the rush of the movement of his cape. It’s startlingly grand despite himself. “I absolutely don’t know where you get your ideas about the Midwest, but you _ have _ to keep talking to me and you have to forgive me simply because I've got to show you what Kansas is _ actually _ like, you're ridiculous! What _ is _a thing is the fact that I’m pretty sure you would love Smallville! We have better ice cream than Metropolis could imagine!”

“Wow,” Louis throws a hand up. He’s suddenly laughing despite himself, and Marcel is pink in the cheeks and looking flustered, more _ Marcel _than anything before, Marcel with a cape, Louis can suddenly see it now, so much Justice and so much jawline and so much conviction. “Fighting words! You haven’t even had the triple-decker-caramel-carousel at McEwan’s,” 

“You pointed it out on the menu,” Marcel says, “That thing was atrocious. I’m capable of eating more than four adult male humans and even I don’t want to eat that.” 

“Coward,” Louis says, soft and not at all meaning it, forgiveness melting through him like McEwan’s caramel, probably showing on his stupid face.

Marcel moves forward just a little bit faster than a human, and he grabs Louis’ hand before Louis can lower it.

“I’m sorry,” Marcel says. His hand is, as when they first met, warm and lovely. Louis doesn’t want to let go of it, so he doesn’t. Marcel’s gaze is fierce, fixed on Louis. “I’m really sorry. I'm sorry I lied to you, but I was trying to figure out how to tell you. That's why I came as Marcel and not Harry to the tower. I knew you could solve this story. I just wanted to be there to help. I’m still figuring everything out. I care about people, and the truth. And. You know. I kind of care about you.” 

He shifts, one foot to the other, and Louis can picture him at the edge of a cornfield, can picture him in the sky, can picture him hunched over the messy piles of papers at Louis’ desk, determined face, going after what he believes in. 

“I came here tonight because I wanted to tell you that. Even though it’s impossible, and I’m not like anything that’s meant to be here, in your life, and I’m still figuring everything out and it’s frankly a little bit of a mess. But I just wanted to tell you.”

Louis looks at his hand. Marcel starts to pull it away, but Louis doesn’t let him. Or, Marcel lets Louis not let him, because Marcel has superhuman strength and Louis only has the obnoxious strength given by the marrow-deep stubbornness that defines any decent journalist, but he grips Marcel’s hand anyway. 

“Impossible, not meant to be here, a little bit of a mess, in need of an alter ego once in a while,” Louis says, still looking at their hands. 

“Yes,” Marcel says, sounding...hopeful. 

"Sounds pretty fucking human to me," Louis says, finally looking up. Marcel's mouth pulls back up into that indomitable country smile. 

"And I have edits for the LexCorp story, I cut you down at least two thousand words," Marcel says, like a charming awful country _ bastard, _using his free hand to pull reams of paper from an impossible pocket in the back of his suit, all marked up with red pen.

"Prom King, how could you," Louis hisses, making a grabby hand for the draft and scanning it with an expression of what he hopes is lead investigator horror and not dopey, hopeless fondness. 

Marcel has stepped even closer without Louis realizing it, or maybe it's an unfair use of superpowers. His face is a wash of relief, and maybe, boldness. There’s no sun out but it’s shining in Louis’ apartment anyway. 

“If we’re still working together,” he says hopefully, “There’s something I thought I could show you.” 

***

Flying halfway across the globe in a few minutes shouldn't be possible let alone comfortable, and Louis has so many questions when Harry/Marcel dumps the two of them onto a shimmering plateau of unutterable beauty, a stretching horizon of white landscape as far as human vision can see. Harry can probably see penguins, fuck him.

"How was that not cold? What about the wind chill? Why did my skin not detach from my skull?" Louis babbles. 

"Alien magic," Marcel says dismissively, flying them another half a mile into an ice crevice. Louis clutches into the red cape that's handily covering him on most sides. 

"You can't keep answering everything like that. Where did _ Ma Kent _get this material," he asks with deep suspicion. 

"So this is, this is the place I come when I need a break from everything," Marcel says. His cheeks have gone pink and pretty again and Louis gets caught on it. "I never bring anyone here."

"You just brought me," Louis says.

"Yeah," Marcel says, sounding not like an alien but like a very cute boy, looking determinedly at an icicle and not at Louis. 

Marcel walks them forward, into the most incredible structure Louis has ever seen. It's like a skyscraper and an ice palace had a baby, it's the least human and most alien thing that Louis has ever seen, a building _ grown _from minerals and rock and metallic columns that seem to pulse and live and breathe. 

"I thought you deserved to see a secret," Marcel says. "The Fortress of Solitude is a good one." 

"The _ what," _ Luis chortles, frighteningly close to saying _ you flew me to a goddamn pole, I'm not even sure which one, you're forgiven already. _

"It's the…" Marcel--shit no, _ Harry _ \--well screw it, Louis is just going to flip between these isn't he. _ Kent _mumbles something under his breath. 

"What was that?" Louis taps Marcel's arm. He still hasn't let go of Louis, like Louis is going to fall off into a fissure if he does. Fair enough, though. "What did you say this place is? The Hall of Justice? The Calibration Zone? Alien Meditation Supreme Yoga Studio?" 

"The Fortress! Of Solitude!" Marcel splutters. His whole face is red and Louis beams at him. He's dizzy with joy and laughter and silliness, because if there was still a tiny gap in his heart wondering whether _ Superman _ is really still _ Marcel, _ if the gentle earnest nerd he'd fallen for during a boring staff meeting can simultaneously be the greatest hero Earth didn't know it always needed and _ a complete dork _. Well. There was that question answered. 

"Of course!" Louis yells, and it bounces around the glacieric palace. "I bet you made this place when you were sixteen and angsty."

"I was fully seventeen," Marcel gasps, happily squeezing his eyes closed but never losing a careful grip on Louis. Louis peers over the edge of a vast chasm and Marcel tugs him back. 

"Carving ice boulders with your laser eyes while you listened to emo country. You're such a nerd."

"You got thrown off a building for _ paperwork!" _Marcel yelps. 

"Super important paperwork. I had a hunch someone was looking after me," Louis says. He's breathless and laughing and Marcel is _ infinitely strong, _ And they just _ flew to the North Pole. _Or the South Pole. Hard to tell.

"I was. I was so worried," Marcel says, and Louis feels certain it's not just about their daringdo. 

"I don't like not knowing things," Louis admits. He looks out at the shining expanse of Superman's fortress. No one else has ever been here, no one in the world. Louis doesn't know why he's the one. He should crack it open. You shouldn't just _ trust _people who claim to be superhuman. 

"But it's only…human to need a secret identity once in a while," Louis says. "Plus I was deeply distracted by having a crush on this newbie reporter." 

"Really?" Marcel says. He's grinning now, and the cape is drifting gently in a faint Arctic breeze. Everything is magic, or maybe it's just science, but either way he's a _ miracle, _and Louis is the one seeing it. "Really?" 

"Obviously," Louis says. "I guess, secret traded for secret, that's mine. Crush on a coworker, disgraceful. I guess if you're keeping the Daily Planet gig, I mean," 

"I definitely _ am," _Marcel says. And goddamn, how could you not believe that face? "I wasn't lying about being a reporter. It's just that I'm also, I'm also this--and I don't, I'm still just trying to figure out how to be all of this," 

"Right, carve out a place for a Superhero, no big deal," Louis says airily even though the word is _ crazy _and it makes him feel like he's dancing on the edge of a cliff, but he loves it, ready to fly again and again and again. 

“I may be ignoring several world leaders’ messages at this very moment,” Marcel admits. 

"Just take it one supervillain at a time. I've got a whole filing cabinet of leads to start with.” 

“You’re good at that,” Marcel says. “That’s why I started getting a crush on _ you.” _

“That and the coffee,” Louis says. 

“Not really the coffee, Kryptonian powers only go so far,” Marcel says, wrinkling his nose, and Louis laughs, loud enough to echo off the ice walls.

Louis leans in, closes the small amount of distance between them. Marcel doesn't move, merely holds himself in the air, more still than any normal person could. _ He's extraordinary, nothing you've ever seen _ before, Louis thinks, but it's not a fearful thought. It's a _ possibility, _ it's the _ truth, _it's the mess waiting to be discovered. It's like the ever-shifting, dazzling complexity of Metropolis. 

"Maybe a partner in crime, someone in the business of really understanding humanity--maybe that could help with the whole Superhero thing." 

"I think it would," Marcel says. His face is so open and lovely. Louis nods. Marcel’s still gently holding his arm and Marcel is a thousand ridiculous things and Louis is _ here. _He licks his bottom lip, and Marcel shifts from one superpowered foot to the other, and Louis reaches out and tugs him closer. 

"Out of curiosity, and my diligence in informing your sociological fact gathering, this being our third date, do aliens use _ beds?" _

***

Aliens may or may not use beds--Louis is momentarily distracted from the question by a Kryptonian artificial intelligence crystal that pipes up from the wall to suggest, cheerfully, _ an informative strategy training session we have designed based on our observations of your current objectives! _But Marcel kicks the crystal into quiet and refuses to answer Louis’ pestering questions about strategy. 

But Marcel has a bed, at least. 

“It looks like _ Kansas _ in here,” Louis gasps, down an ice-corridor and past a staggeringly beautiful cavern of glowing ice sculptures that he wants to investigate further, through a door of what looks suspiciously like impossibly heavy tungsten. But _ this _ is clearly Marcel’s living space: ice-walls hung with artistically minimal posters of stars and planets, a thick grey couch in the corner, there are even carpets. There’s a tiny pot that contains a terrified looking plant next to a small space heater plugged into a generator. 

“Sometimes I get homesick,” Marcel says, embarrassed around the edges but still gracefully pulling Louis forward with his own back to everything. He couldn’t fall, Louis realizes, he’s half an inch off the ground. 

“I’m going to give you a hard time about this,” Louis says, “I haven’t forgotten the bed question, do you _ sleep, _what’s the situation if the sun gives you powers, have you ever stayed on the dark side of the planet long enough to find out what happens if you aren’t in the sun for a long--”

“A little, and not yet, and you should start writing these down and I can answer them while _ you _ sleep,” Marcel says, his nose somewhere under Louis’ eye, close like it’s just interesting to be close to Louis’ face, his other hand creeping up the back of Louis’ neck. He’s going to answer a thousand questions before Louis slows down, but they’re smiling, and Marcel is warm under Louis’ hands and he’s a dork and a newbie reporter _ and _ a superhero, and there’s a high school letter jacket on a coat hook _ carved out of ice _ and it says _ Smallville _on it. 

“You really just are yourself, huh,” Louis says. He realizes that Marcel is still floating. Louis nudges him and he drifts a little in the cold air, like he isn’t an object denser than a human and impervious to metal when he wants to be. Marcel without his glasses is flushed and beautiful, bright eyes and a smile that keeps coming back. There are a thousand questions but that’s ok. 

The kissing is distracting in itself, anyway. Louis kisses Marcel, easily, like they’ve been doing it forever, and Marcel kisses back and everything about it is _ marvelous. _Better than ice cream, better than takeout, better than closing a story.

Well, maybe it’s just as good as closing a story. 

Marcel kisses with more tongue than Louis expects but he certainly isn’t complaining. It’s lush, beautiful, and getting hotter by the second, and where on earth is that _ bed, _anyway? Louis pushes Marcel backwards and Marcel obligingly drifts, but he takes Louis with him. 

“I think you taste like a hay bale,” Louis informs him around his mouth. “And outer space. It’s like a space...barn.” 

“I really truly hope not,” Marcel says, sounding absolutely shocked and like he took that statement completely seriously. Louis can’t help the laugh that bubbles up between his teeth and into Marcel’s crazy, warm, alien mouth. He kisses like a human. He kisses like a human who’s a good kisser. 

Louis pushes him back and he floats. Louis kisses Marcel and he kisses back. Louis closes his eyes and it’s _ Harry, red cape, superhero, _ he can feel the drift of hair brushing against his own temple and he can feel the impossible strength in the arms that he’s gripping.  
  
“Not that this isn’t great, but also, I just feel like I should say, we don’t have to go fast,” Marcel says, Marcel after all, all farm boy gentle. 

Maybe nice men don’t grow on trees but maybe they fall from the sky. 

“I kind of only go fast, you should probably know that,” Louis says. Marcel’s kissing underneath his ear a little bit more urgently now so Louis thinks that that’s ok. He traces over the muscles on the back of Marcel’s arms, the heady carve of his forearms. Louis is _ such _a goner for a good forearm. It’s terrible. It’s wonderfully terrible. All of Louis’ different crushes are colliding in his head like a supernova. 

“I have superspeed and I still feel like I’m always racing to catch up to you,” Marcel says. Louis blinks at him, uncertain if that’s good or bad, and Marcel grips Louis around the torso and lifts. 

They float, very precisely four feet from the carpet and beneath the string of lights that Louis just bets Marcel brought with him from a Smallville downtown street hardware store, held to the ice ceiling with small crystalline carvings. Louis can feel the shape of Marcel pressing into him, the warm line of his stomach and the intoxicatingly nice cut of his hips. Superhero dates are the _ best. _

“_I cannot believe I didn’t think of this,” _ Louis yells, startling Marcel so much that he almost drops Louis, but Louis has got feet balanced well on Marcel’s _ Harry the Superhero _red boots now, he’s like a pro at this alien business. “How long can we float here? How well can you hold me up?”

“Probably at least a decade before your complaining gets to me,” Marcel says, deadpan and charming, and Louis has lost any last hint of hesitation. He finds a clever button-hook combination behind Marcel’s shoulders that attaches the cape to the suit and he starts working it loose.

“I can hold you one-handed,” Marcel says, _ shocking. _Louis throws his head back and laughs and in the space of it, his shirt is unbuttoned at the speed of light. He shrugs it off and throws it down to the floor and watches, delighted, as it flutters to the ice-carpet. 

“We’re flying and making out at the same time_, _this is the absolute best third date ever, kiss me,” Louis commands. And Marcel does. 

They do make their way to the bed eventually, Louis discovering he does not actually have the core strength for demanding in-air gymnastics longer than ten minutes. “I will learn,” he threatens darkly, into Marcel’s neck as Marcel hovers easily over him. Dates with superheroes are going to spoil Louis for everything else. He bites lightly into the top of Marcel’s shoulder and his teeth slide right off. 

“That probably won’t be effective,” Marcel says, gasping a little as Louis works his hands further down. 

“Oh, well, at least _ some _things still work the way humans expect,” Louis says cavalierly. The suit doesn’t disguise much but Louis cannot find the seams. He presses his palms into Marcel’s gorgeous torso, the dip of his hip where it meets his groin, and further and further. “Things will work the way I expect, right? No Kryptonian secrets, aside from this slightly disturbing predilection for underwear as outerwear thing,” 

Marcel rolls his eyes, sits up, and expertly flips some invisible zipper with his fluid, superspeed hands. The suit slides down gently and Louis watches it with great satisfaction. 

“Things work like you expect,” Marcel says, flushing all the way down past his collarbone and looking _ lovely. _“Kryptonians are perfectly safely compatible with humans...let’s just say I did a great deal of research on this in early high school. I had to have a lot of awkward conversations with those crystals.” 

Louis laughs and laughs, but he doesn’t stop looking at Marcel, smiling like a doofus, running his fingertips over the warm skin. It seems impossible that they’re surrounded by so much ice, and it’s so warm. 

“Just imprinting it on my memory in case Niall needs a reference,” Louis says when Marcel makes a face at him, caught between embarrassment and happiness and the utter silly sensation that is undressing with a stranger, a friend, a person-with-whom-one-has-survived-gunpoint, and a miracle all rolled into one. It’s a feeling that Louis doesn’t mind even a little bit. He gets a flash of _ Harry _again, sunshine in the hair, wind underneath the cape, but then it’s just the two of them and Louis is clambering on top of Marcel and losing his pants, somehow, in the process. 

“You’re a very sneaky superhero,” Louis says with a mouthful of curls, his hand in a rewarding place around the excellent curve of Marcel’s ass. Marcel doesn’t respond but then he makes an argument that’s extremely hard to answer by thrusting his thigh between Louis’ legs, warm and certain and playful, and running his palm over Louis’ cock, gentle as anything, terribly teasing. He flips them around, pushes Louis into the bed for a warm, heady kiss. 

They rock into the bed, or at least Louis does, because Marcel is clearly holding back on all of his superpowers and acting like he weighs five pounds flat, floating over the covers. Louis is caught between a laugh and a gasp, pulling Marcel into him. He bites at Marcel’s lip, pushes the suit the rest of the way down, finds Marcel’s _ very goddamn Superheroic cock, what the fuck, _tightens his hand, and Marcel gets a little bit heavier, gasping against Louis’ ear.

“There we go, don’t need to save the world _ all _ the time, do we,” Louis whispers. He can feel their breath together, the pounding of his own heart in his ears, happy and exuberant and disbelieving, lights off the crystals catching in the corners of his eyes. Marcel sinks deeper into him, a close body giving gradually in to gravity as they kiss, touch, _ move. _ It feels a lot like trust. 

***

The Investigative Team Celebration Party is held in Louis’ apartment and catered by Mr. L’s on Thirtieth, and it is attended by Zayn, Niall, Liam on honorary admittance, Louis, and Marcel, who keeps getting up to inspect Louis’ bookshelves in an adorably inquisitive, if invasive way, and then back down when Louis throws crunchy bits at his back. 

Marcel can hear them coming before they hit and catches them before Louis even knows they’ve left his hand, which he violently declares to be _ unfair, _but Marcel merely twinkles fondly at him, and Louis collapses back into a contented heap of sesame chicken and fatigue. 

_ Louis _does not have super stamina, but he’s working on it. 

“You have to mix the sesame chicken up with the tahini sauce that Zayn brought back from Southside,” Niall is telling Marcel, over the quietly polite gagging noise that Marcel is making. 

"It's a tradition," Louis informs him. “You’re gonna have to learn how to eat like the Planet natives.” 

"I _ grew up on earth _," Marcel says for the hundredth time that evening, “You cannot keep acting like my being an alien makes me gullible.” 

They all crack up, stupid and wonderful and together, Louis’ apartment feeling warm and cozy and salty with the smell of take-out. Niall slaps Louis on the back of the head extremely lightly. "Don't be insensitive about immigration. Marcel is just as much a part of this culture as you are and we're lucky to have him bringing his interplanatary--" he pauses and looks inquiringly at Marcel--

"Intergalactic," Marcel says. Which wow, every time Louis tries to wrap his head around Krypton he realizes he's forgotten something ludicrous like the fact that they had galaxy jumping space ships, and he's really going to have to have that follow-up interview with _ Harry the Metropolis Superman _soon--

"Intergalactic culture with him," Niall finishes grandly. 

“We’ve still gotta run that interview, I mean, it was fun to weave in the _ Harry _ stuff and the LexCorp story together, just imagine how many hits the next one will get,” Zayn says from the couch, sleepy and self-satisfied. He's laying with his head in Liam's lap and Liam is very cautiously petting it. Louis has been exerting superheroic strength in not commenting on this.  
  
“SEO will _ freak,” _Niall agrees.

"I meant a _ Metropolis _ tradition," Louis says, sidling up to Marcel to hide under his arm and ward off any further Niall-attacks.

"Is it?" Marcel smiles down at him. Louis smiles back. He needs to show Marcel all sides of Metropolis: the outdoors movie theatre with its discount Tuesdays, the markets in Southside where the real Metropolis hangs out on a Thursday night and tries to sell you deep-fried dough and the best rotisserie in the city, the quiet library where Louis has been maintaining a covert scholars' access card for the last five years. Marcel will love that.

“It is,” Louis says. Zayn is stretched out on the couch underneath Marcel’s superhero cape, which Louis can attest is deliciously warm, but he is _ not _ going to tell Zayn some of the things that cape has seen. Better for them all to keep _ some _ secrets. Niall is sketching _ Harry in flight _ illustrations, and Louis is going to steal one for his bedroom wall, probably. Liam is frowning over security plans for the Daily Planet, because he's taken the newly-created role of _ please let's keep people from being kidnapped it's driving Perry to an early grave. _Louis makes a mental note to tell him about the scones.

And Marcel is wrapping Louis up even closer against his side, a fully-admitted member of the Investigative Team, wearing his glasses, smiling down at Louis and undoubtedly planning to say something impossibly nerdy in a second, something about Earth trade politics or Louis’ excessive run-on sentences or the conversation of whales. 

“It’s not the cow-filled childhood that makes you gullible, Farmlands,” Louis says, “I hate to tell you. It’s your undying belief in Justice.” 

“What a tragedy, gonna have to become one of those insane journalists at the Daily Planet, chasing down bad guys and making terrible choices,” Marcel says. “I hear those guys never give up.” 

“With any luck,” Louis says, “Luck and like, a really good role model. Someone to be a bad influence.” 

“I can think of someone,” Marcel says. He tilts his head to the side, listening to things that Louis can’t hear. He looks back down at Louis, eyes bright. And from the window come the sounds of Metropolis, a thousand spiraling leads, all possibility. 

“Want to chase a story?” Marcel asks, gripping Louis just a little tighter, a solid warm hold, and raising them impossibly into the air. 

“Always,” Louis says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep following the leads, friends! This story was a blast to write and I loved living in a comic book universe for a hot second. 
> 
> If you enjoyed and are on tumblr, I would absolutely love if you felt like giving [the tumblr post](https://helloamhere.tumblr.com/post/188336426898/helloamhere-strange-happenings-at-the-daily) a reblog!


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